Spontaneous electromagnetic fluctuations in unmagnetized plasmas. II. Relativistic form factors of aperiodic thermal modes

Abstract

General expressions for the electromagnetic fluctuation spectra in unmagnetized plasmas are derived using fully relativistic dispersion functions and form factors for the important class of isotropic plasma particle distribution functions including in particular relativistic Maxwellian distributions. In order to obtain fluctuation spectra valid in the entire complex frequency plane, the proper analytical continuations of the unmagnetized form factors and dispersion functions are presented. The results are illustrated for the important special case of isotropic Maxwellian particle distribution functions providing in particular the thermal fluctuations of aperiodic modes. No restriction to the plasma temperature value is made, and the electromagnetic fluctuation spectra of ultrarelativistic thermal plasmas are calculated. The fully relativistic calculations also provide more general results in the limit of nonrelativistic plasma temperatures being valid in the entire complex frequency plane. They complement our earlier results in paper I and III of this series for negative values of the imaginary part of the frequency. A new collective, transverse, damped aperiodic mode with the damping rate γ∝−k−5/3 is discovered in an isotropic thermal electron-proton plasma with nonrelativistic temperatures.