Frequency Spectrum of Thermal Fluctuations in Plasmas

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Abstract
The frequency spectrum of electron density fluctuations arising from thermal motions of the particles in a plasma is computed by means of an extension of Richardson's noise theory. Calculations based on the relaxation-model kinetic equation, which is taken to represent a plasma in which the dominant collision processes are those between charged particles and neutral particles, lead to the usual collision-free results in the limit of vanishing collision frequency. For the collision-dominated plasma, this model leads to spectral widths proportional to the ion-diffusion coefficient. Calculations based on the Fokker-Planck model kinetic equation, which is taken to represent a plasma in which the dominant-collision processes are those between charged particles, lead to spectral widths which are also proportional to the ion-diffusion coefficient.

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