On the Relaxation Effect in the Electrical Conductivity of Plasmas and Electrolytes

Abstract

We apply the general formalism developed by Prigogine and co-workers to the problem of transport in plasmas and in electrolytes. Taking into account the collective effects due to the long range character of Coulomb forces, we obtain first an exact transport equation for a dilute plasma which we then generalize to an electrolyte, using a semiphenomenological description of the solvant. Special attention is given to the internal field effect which is shown to result from the interference between the external field and the collision processes. We show that, in very simple cases, good agreement is obtained with the Debye—Onsager limiting laws.