Longitudinal electric current generated by a transverse electromagnetic field in a collisional plasma

Resumo

We consider a collisional plasma with an arbitrary degree of degeneration of the electron gas. The plasma is located in an external electromagnetic field. We calculate the electric current generated in the plasma by the electromagnetic field. We show that the electric current has two nonzero components. One component is a transverse current, obtained by a linear analysis. The second component is a longitudinal current directed along the wave vector and orthogonal to the transverse current. We consider the case of small wave numbers. As the collision rate tends to zero, all the derived formulas pass into formulas for a collisionless plasma. We perform a graphical investigation of the dimensionless current density depending on the wave number, the oscillation frequency of the electromagnetic field, and the rate of electron collisions with plasma particles.