Ambipolar diffusion in two-temperature multicomponent plasmas

Abstract

A recent formulation of multicomponent diffusion in multitemperature gas mixtures [J. D. Ramshaw, J. Non-equilib. Thermodyn. 18. 121 (1993)] is applied to ambipolar diffusion in two-temperature multicomponent plasmas in zero magnetic field. Simplifications chic to the small electron muss are systematically exploited. A general expression is derived for the ambipolar electric field E. In the special case where the electron and heavy-particle temperatures are equal, this expression reduces to a result previously obtained using a self-consistent effective binary diffusion (SCEBD) approximation [J. D. Ramshaw and C. H. Chang,Plasma Chem. Plasma Process.11. 395 (1991)]. When thermal diffusion due to electrons is neglected, the heavy particles are shown to diffuse precisely as they would in the same E field if the electrons were entirely removed from the system. Finally, the SCEBD approximation for ambipolar diffusion in multicomponent plasmas is generalized to the case, of unequal electron and heavy-particle temperatures.