Photoabsorption in a plasma in a high magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper re-examines photo-absorption in high magnetic field plasmas using many-body quantum field theory, revealing significant differences from previous results near electron and proton cyclotron resonances due to new energy-shift considerations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach by including the real part of the energy-shift of the resonant state, leading to revised absorption rates near cyclotron resonances.

Findings

Disagreement with previous literature near electron cyclotron resonance.

Revised absorption rates due to inclusion of energy-shift effects.

Differences also observed near proton cyclotron resonance.

Abstract

Photo-absorption in fully ionized plasmas in high magnetic fields is re-examined, using the methods of many-body quantum field theory. For frequencies in the immediate vicinity of the electron cyclotron resonance the rates we obtain disagree markedly from those in the literature. The new element in our work that causes most of the disagreement is the inclusion of the lowest order real part of the energy-shift of the resonant state, where, in effect, previous authors had included only the imaginary part. In a region around and below the proton cyclotron resonance our results also disagree with those of previous authors, for a number of reasons.