On the Quasicollisionality of Plasmas with Small-Scale Electric Turbulence

Abstract

Chaotic electromagnetic fields are common in many relativistic plasma environments, where they can be excited by instabilities on kinetic spatial scales. When strong electric fluctuations exist on sub-electron scales, they may lead to small-angle, stochastic deflections of the electrons' pitch-angles. Under certain conditions, this closely resembles the effect of Coulomb collisions in collisional plasmas. The electric pitch-angle diffusion coefficient acts as an effective collision -- or "quasi-collision" -- frequency. We show that quasi-collisions may radically alter the expected radiative transport properties of candidate plasmas. In particular, we consider the quasi-collisional generalization of the classical Faraday effect.

6 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Propagation Effects in Magnetized Transrelativistic Plasmas
• Modeling Spectral Variability of Prompt GRB Emission within the Jitter Radiation Paradigm
• General properties of the radiation spectra from relativistic electrons moving in a Langmuir turbulence
• Radiation From Particles Moving in Small-Scale Magnetic Fields Created in Solid-Density Laser-Plasma Laboratory Experiments