Relativistic dynamics of electrons around impurities in high-density plasmas

Authors

Abstract

AbstractIn this work, we focus our attention on the dynamic properties of relativistic electrons moving around an impurity in a plasma. This led us, in the first place, to compute the effective plasma potential (EPP) in which the electrons move. The EPP is built up as a sum of three contributions. These include the potential created by the impurity, the potential due to the ions assumed to form a uniform background of positive electric charges and the potential due to all the electrons. It turns out that the last potential depends on an integral of a function of the EPP in question. This then leads to a nonlinear integral equation where the EPP is the main quantity to compute. Thanks to the EPP, we derive the electron trajectories and compute their total electric field (microfield) at the impurity. According to different plasma conditions, two dynamical properties are then calculated: the time auto-correlation function of this microfield and the dielectric constant. These properties are calculated for both the relativistic case and non-relativistic (classical) case. The comparison between the relativistic and the classical results are also done for the different plasma conditions.

Keywords

• Dielectric constant
• Deutsch potential
• Effective plasma potential
• Kelbg potential
• Microfield autocorrelation function
• Relativistic dynamics
• Screened