Recombination in Columns

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Abstract
Gaseous matter is considered, in which an initially inhomogeneous ionization in columns is produced by charged particles. The simultaneous processes of ionization carrier diffusion from, and recombination in, the columns are calculated for a plasma model considering the effects of different electron and ion mobility in the nonisothermal collective diffusion approximation. Analytical solutions of the space and time dependence of the electron and ion density fields and the electric diffusion field are given, as well as the temporal development of the effective column radius, and the critical time τH for the ionization to become homogeneous. Based on the dynamics of the individual ionization columns, a macroscopic recombination theory is developed resulting in a quasilinear recombinative plasma decay equation for times 0≤t<τH. The effective columnar recombination coefficient is shown to be considerably larger than the atomic recombination coefficient, αN>α for t<τH, and explicitly time dependent due to the internal dynamics of the system, αN→α for t→τH.