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Observation of transport to thermal equilibrium in pure electron plasmas

1988; American Physical Society; Volume: 60; Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.60.1290

1092-0145

C. F. Driscoll, J. H. Malmberg, K. S. Fine,

Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena

Transport of magnetically confined pure electron plasmas to global thermal equilibrium has recently been observed. In equilibrium, the E\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}B and diamagnetic drifts calculated from the measured temperature and density profiles combine to give rigid rotation (i.e., 〈${v}_{\ensuremath{\theta}}$〉=\ensuremath{\omega}r), as expected. However, the density profile relaxes towards equilibrium up to 5000 times faster than predicted by Boltzmann transport theory: Over a decade range of magnetic field, the density equilibration time is always less than predicted, and scales as ${B}^{1}$ rather than as ${B}^{4}$.