Screening and quantum effects on the bremsstrahlung process in strongly coupled semiclassical plasmas

Abstract

Collective plasma screening and quantum mechanical effects on the low-energy electron–ion Coulomb bremsstrahlung process are investigated for both the soft and hard photon radiations in strongly coupled semiclassical plasmas. The effective screened pseudopotential taking into account both the screening and quantum effects is applied to describe the electron–ion interactions in strongly coupled semiclassical plasmas. The impact-parameter trajectory method is applied to the motion of the projectile electron in order to investigate the variation of the bremsstrahlung cross section as a function of the impact parameter, Debye length, thermal de Broglie wavelength, projectile energy, and radiation photon energy. The results show that the collective plasma screening and quantum mechanical effects reduce the electron–ion bremsstrahlung cross section, especially, for small impact parameters. It is also found that the quantum mechanical effects are found to be more important than the collective plasma screening effects in strongly coupled semiclassical plasmas. The collective plasma screening and quantum mechanical effects on the bremsstrahlung cross section for soft photon radiations are found to be more significant than those for hard photon radiations.