Heavy ions in light gases in an electric field

Leonardo Ferrari

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1990, vol. 163, issue 2, 596-614

Abstract: Kihara's time-dependent solution of the approximate Boltzmann equation (Fokker-Planck equation) for heavy ions in light gases in static electric and magnetic fields is extended in order to treat also the cases in which the electric field varies in time. However, since Kihara's solution refers only to the particular situation in which the initial ion velocity distribution is a (shifted) Maxwellian distribution at the equilibrium temperature, a new, quite general method to solve the Fokker-Planck equation with arbitrary initial conditions is also presented. This method reduces the problem to the field-free case, and yields, obviously, the extended Kihara solution as particular case. In the framework of the theory based on the Fokker-Planck equation, our present results show that, both in the absence and in the presence of electric and or magnetic fields (and when diffusion phenomena are negligible), an ion velocity distribution which is initially Maxwellian (at any temperature) around any ion mean velocity, maintains its Maxwellian form during the relaxation process. Moreover, stationary and non-stationary ion velocity distributions in static or alternating electric fields and static magnetic fields are also explicitly obtained.

Date: 1990
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037843719090147K
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:163:y:1990:i:2:p:596-614

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(90)90147-K

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().