Heating of a Plasma by Multiphoton Inverse Bremsstrahlung

Abstract

The heating of plasma electrons in a laser beam by the inverse Bremsstrahlung process is considered from a quantum-mechanical viewpoint. A kinetic equation is derived and the change in kinetic energy of the electrons is calculated. Effective collision frequencies are found for the two cases of weak field and strong field and are compared to the classical results. It is found that the Coulomb logarithm, which appears in the classical expressions for the effective collision frequency, does not appear in the strong-field expression for effective collision frequency of the present work.