Scattering of magnetized electrons by a moving heavy ion

Abstract

The energy loss of a heavy ion moving in a magnetized electron plasma is considered within the linear response (LR) and binary collision (BC) treatments with the purpose of looking for a connection between these two models. For the BC treatment we assume that the heavy ion provides a small perturbation of the helical motion of the electrons, which is developed in second-order perturbation theory. It is shown that the averaging procedure for the energy transfer due to two-body collisions and for smoothened interaction potentials, which require no cutoffs, leads to the full conformity between LR and BC approaches in the limit of a non-interacting electron plasma.