On the kinetic theory of stable and weakly unstable plasma. Part 2

Abstract

In plasma, where collective motions are made possible by the long range of the Coulomb interaction, there is properly no general kinetic equation for the one-particle distribution function alone. In part 1, we gave the foundations of an enlarged kinetic theory of plasma where the time evolution of the electric field fluctuations Ik is considered simultaneously with the time evolution of the one-particle distribution F. Here we improve these equations in a systematic fashion to include all processes which are relevant in stable and weakly unstable plasma. More precisely, the equation for the waves now includes, besides Landau damping and Cerenkov emission, the effect of collisional damping and nonlinear Landau damping, as well as emission via particle-particle scattering (bremsstrahlung), wave-particle and wave-wave scattering. The particle kinetic equation is also improved accordingly so that we obtain a kinetic description which is uniformly valid for all plasma réegimes, if one excludes strong turbulence (for which there is at present no completely satisfactory statistical theory).