The trajectory of an electron in a plasma
Résumé
Collisions in gaseous plasmas are fundamentally different from collisions in neutral gases because a charged particle interacts simultaneously with many others via the Coulomb potential. This difference is not as intuitive for students as the billiard ball like collisions of neutral particles. We present trajectories of electrons in a weakly coupled plasma obtained from particle simulations. The trajectories illustrate the concept of distant collisions and the variation of the free path with energy, which has major consequences in plasma physics.