Collision Damping of Electron Plasma Waves

Abstract

The damping of electron plasma waves, which results from electron‐ion and electron‐electron collisions, has been studied. A perturbation expansion about a self‐consistent field is used. For long wavelengths, the principal contribution to the damping results from electron‐ion collisions, with the contribution from electron‐electron correlations smaller by a factor of the order (k/k_D)², where k_D is the Debye wavenumber. Furthermore, in a high‐temperature gas, it is found that the exchange contribution to electron‐electron scatters is smaller than the direct contribution by a logarithmic factor.