Coulomb Logarithm in Nonideal and Degenerate Plasmas

Abstract

Various methods for determining the Coulomb logarithm in the kinetic theory of transport and various variants of the choice of the plasma screening constant, taking into account and disregarding the contribution of the ion component and the boundary value of the electron wavevector are considered. The correlation of ions is taken into account using the Ornstein–Zernike integral equation in the hypernetted-chain approximation. It is found that the effect of ion correlation in a nondegenerate plasma is weak, while in a degenerate plasma, this effect must be taken into account when screening is determined by the electron component alone. The calculated values of the electrical conductivity of a hydrogen plasma are compared with the values determined experimentally in the megabar pressure range. It is shown that the values of the Coulomb logarithm can indeed be smaller than unity. Special experiments are proposed for a more exact determination of the Coulomb logarithm in a magnetic field for extremely high pressures, for which electron scattering by ions prevails.