Mean Force Kinetic Theory: a Convergent Kinetic Theory for Weakly and Strongly Coupled Plasmas

Abstract

A new closure of the BBGKY hierarchy is developed, which results in a convergent kinetic equation that provides a rigorous extension of plasma kinetic theory into the regime of strong Coulomb coupling. The approach is based on a single expansion parameter which enforces that the exact equilibrium limit is maintained at all orders. Because the expansion parameter does not explicitly depend on the range or the strength of the interaction potential, the resulting kinetic theory does not suffer from the typical divergences at short and long length scales encountered when applying the standard kinetic equations to Coulomb interactions. The approach demonstrates that particles effectively interact via the potential of mean force and that the range of this force determines the size of the collision volume. When applied to a plasma, the collision operator is shown to be related to the effective potential theory [Baalrud and Daligault, Phys. Rev. Lett 110, 235001 (2013)]. The relationship between this and previous kinetic theories is discussed.

12 pages

References in corpus (8)

• Accurate Determination of the Shear Viscosity of the One-Component Plasma
• Extending plasma transport theory to strong coupling through the concept of an effective interaction potential
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• Pair Correlation Functions of Strongly Coupled Two-Temperature Plasma
• Effective Potential and Interdiffusion in Binary Ionic Mixtures
• Renormalized kinetic theory of classical fluids in and out of equilibrium
• The Barkas Effect in Plasma Transport

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