Coulomb plasmas

A. Alastuey and B. Jancovici. On the classical two-dimensional one-component Coulomb plasma. Journal de Physique 42 1-12 (1981). 

Vjh is the potential energy Qf a neutral 2-d Coulomb plasma with charge -e for long range it exhibits the 2-d logarithmic Coulomb potential (r- °0) with a soft core cut-off at small distance a to avoid ultraviolet divergencies. The relevant parameters here are identified as... 

J. Tavares, E.J. Swanson, and S. Coulombe, Plasma synthesis of coated metal nanoparticles with surface properties tailored for dispersion. Plasma Processes and Polymers, 5, 759-769, 2008. 

A variety of methods have been developed to study exocytosis. Neurotransmitter and hormone release can be measured by the electrical effects of released neurotransmitter or hormone on postsynaptic membrane receptors, such as the neuromuscular junction (NMJ see below), and directly by biochemical assay. Another direct measure of exocytosis is the increase in membrane area due to the incorporation of the secretory granule or vesicle membrane into the plasma membrane. This can be measured by increases in membrane capacitance (Cm). Cm is directly proportional to membrane area and is defined as Cm = QAJV, where Cm is the membrane capacitance in farads (F), Q is the charge across the membrane in coulombs (C), V is voltage (V) and Am is the area of the plasma membrane (cm2). The specific capacitance, Q/V, is the amount of charge that must be deposited across 1 cm2 of membrane to change the potential by IV. The specific capacitance, mainly determined by the thickness and dielectric constant of the phospholipid bilayer membrane, is approximately 1 pF/cm2 for intracellular organelles and the plasma membrane. Therefore, the increase in plasma membrane area due to exocytosis is proportional to the increase in Cm. 

However, the recent developments in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and the success of its application in another field of physics where the long-range Coulomb forces play a major role, namely plasma physics, have led various authors to investigate the limiting laws for transport phenomena in electrolytes from a... 

This simple result may be improved in various ways first, we may relax the "static approximation and keep the plasma assumption (315). In order to eliminate the divergences brought in by the long-range Coulomb interactions (114), it is then necessary to sum over an infinite class of diagrams, known as the ring... 

It is very easy to find the class of diagrams which have to be retained in order to get the correct relaxation effect indeed the replacement of the screened potential (314) by the Coulomb law (154) forces us to retain all the ring diagrams in order to eliminate the long-range divergences, precisely as was done in Section V-C. However, we also now have to insert on each plasma line the interactions with the solvent, as is illustrated in Fig. 16. 

Owing to the long-range character of Coulomb forces, the formulation of kinetic equations for plasmas is more complicated than that for neutral gases. Therefore, the Coulomb systems show a collective behavior, and we observe for example, the dynamical screening of the Coulomb potential. 

In principle, such approximations may serve as a basis of the description of partially ionized plasmas, if we have to take into account ionization and recombination. However, because of the long range of Coulomb interaction, the Landau collision integral (3.110) and such integrals of type (3.119) are divergent. Such divergencies may be avoided by an appropriate screening. The simplest way to do this is to replace the... 

Let us now consider the problem of bound states in plasmas. The interaction between the plasma particles is given by the Coulomb force. A characteristic feature of this interaction is its long range. Therefore, Coulomb systems show a collective behavior, so we can observe, for instance, the dynamical screening of the Coulomb potential and plasma oscillations. 

The formation of RES and their evolution into post-solitons have been observed in three-dimensional simulations as well [14], The EM structure of the three-dimensional soliton is such that the electric field is poloidal and the magnetic field is toroidal. Therefore it is named a TM-soliton. The soliton core is characterized by an overall positive charge, resulting in its Coulomb explosion and in the acceleration of the ion. On the long time-scale, the quasi-neutral plasma cavity is subject to a slow continuous radial expansion, while the soliton amplitude decreases and the ion temperature increases. 

Below n D = 1 the plasma becomes increasingly correlated. In this region the plasma behavior is often equivalently characterized by the ratio T of the average Coulomb energy between particles, e2/n-1/3, to the thermal energy kT. Specifically, T is defined as... 

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