INVESTIGATION OF THE DYNAMICS OF IONIZED MEDIA (PLASMA)
A study was made of the methods of treating dilute plasmas. Emphasis was placed on fundamental rather than semi-empirical methods. Two approaches were investigated--one, that of Bogoliubov and the other, that of Prigogine and his coworkers. These two approaches led to the same results insofar as plasmas are concerned, but the Prigogine method seemed to be more general and capable of treating a wider class of problems. Also, the assumptions used by the Prigogine school appeared to be more directly justifiable. The report is essentially a detailed account of the Prigogine school's approach to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The starting point is the Liouville equation describing the motion of the entire system. The advantage of using the Liouville equation is that it is linear as contrasted to the non-linear equations of dynamics. The Liouville equation is solved (initial value problem) formally by means of the resolvent expansion technique. Terms in the expansion are associated with diagrams, which are then used to study properties of the terms. Classes of diagrams which are relevent to physical situations can in some cases be summed and lead to macroscopic equations of transport. The procedure is illustrated for weakly interacting systems. The long-range nature of the coulomb force is treated, and the Balescu equation for a homogeneous plasma is derived. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- Physics, Engineering, Chemistry Corp., Boulder, Colo.
- NSA Number:
- NSA-16-028253
- OSTI ID:
- 4811934
- Report Number(s):
- ARL-62-334
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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