Kinetic equation of a relativistic plasma in the weak coupling approximation

Abstract

The correlation pattern formalism is used to derive a kinetic equation for a relativistic plasma and radiation. Landau and Thomson scattering are taken into account to compute the collision operator for the homogeneous weakly coupled case. An H-theorem is proved. The corresponding linearized kinetic equation is a two dimensional matrix equation, the collision operator of which is hermitian. Its spectrum is shown to be definite negative and its collisional invariants are computed.