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Low- and medium-energy kinetic theory of a particle-beam generated plasma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2009
Abstract
The electron distribution fonction in a particle-beam generated plasma is derived in its low- and medium-energy portion (under the first excitation threshold) from a Boltzmann equation, which contains elastic and inelastic collisional processes and a continuous source term. This equation is analytically solved and we discuss the importance of the non-Maxwellian deviations and their consequences for the determination of macroscopic values such as electron density or ‘temperature’. A numerical discussion is included for the case of an argon plasma created by a high-energy electron beam between 103 and 106 eV.
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