Transport coefficients of ionized gases

Abstract

The repulsive and attractive screened Coulomb potentials may be used to represent interactions among charged particles in a gas. The classical Chapman-Enskog collision integrals are calculated for these potentials over a wide range of reduced temperatures, equivalent to a wide range of electron densities and temperatures. At high temperatures the repulsive and attractive collision integrals are equal and agree with the earlier calculations of Kihara and Liboff. At lower temperatures the attractive collision integrals grow larger than the repulsive collision integrals as the temperature falls, and both grow apart from the previous results. It is shown that quantum effects are large in high-density plasmas at all temperatures and in low-density plasmas at very high temperatures.