Interaction of Electromagnetic Waves with Quantum and Classical Plasmas. Correlation Effects

A quantum statistical approach is used to study the interaction of electromagnetic (EM) waves with a hot plasma. The quantum calculation takes into account the correlation effects. The Coulomb interaction between the charged particles is renormalized so as to take care of the collective effects. This renormalization also reduces the number of diagrams to be considered to obtain any desired accuracy. The results for a classical plasma are obtained by passing to the limit $\hslash \to 0$. Some applications are considered for a classical hot plasma. In the damping of EM waves, the contributions of correlations are more important, at the limits of high and low frequencies, than the Landau contribution, which prevails at plasma resonances. Also, the appearance of the ion Doppler spread, instead of the electron Doppler spread, in the data for the scattering of EM waves observed in the ionosphere backscattering experiments, is explained in terms of correlation effects.