Discontinuous distributions in thermal plasmas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for modeling 3D thermal plasmas with discontinuous distributions, deriving a Lorentz force-based equation and establishing bounds on electric field magnitudes in relativistic plasma oscillations.

Contribution

It presents a new approach using piecewise constant distributions to simplify plasma dynamics and couples it with Maxwell's equations to analyze field limits.

Findings

Derived an upper bound on electric field magnitude in relativistic thermal plasmas.

Reduced Vlasov equation to a generalized Lorentz force form for discontinuous distributions.

Applied the method to electrostatic plasma oscillations with magnetic field considerations.

Abstract

We develop a new method for describing the dynamics of 3-dimensional thermal plasmas. Using a piecewise constant 1-particle distribution, we reduce the Vlasov equation to a generalized Lorentz force equation for a family of vector fields encoding the discontinuity. By applying this equation to longitudinal electrostatic plasma oscillations, and coupling it to Maxwell's equations, we obtain a limit on the magnitude of the electric field in relativistic thermal plasma oscillations. We derive an upper bound on the limit and discuss its applicability in a background magnetic field.