Statistical theory of perturbation waves in transport phenomena and its experimental verification

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive statistical theory for perturbation waves in various transport phenomena, establishing their finite propagation speeds and validating the theory with experimental data from laser heating and tokamak experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a universal local time concept and formulates equations for finite-speed perturbation propagation across different states of matter.

Findings

Theoretical speeds of thermal perturbations in phonon, electron gases, and plasma are calculated.

Experimental results from femtosecond laser heating of gold films support the theory.

Power modulation experiments in JET tokamak are consistent with the theoretical predictions.

Abstract

In transport phenomena, perturbation waves are a result of interaction of molecules in gases and liquids, charged particles (ions, electrons) in plasma, conduction electrons and phonons in solid bodies. General statistical theory of the perturbation waves is developed and its corollaries are studied. On this basis is proved universality of introduced earlier local time concept, which leads to a formulation of kinetic, conservation and governing equations for macroscopic transport phenomena with finite speed of the perturbations propagation in gases, liquids, solids and plasma. Speed of thermal perturbations propagation in phonon and Fermi electron gases and plasma, and also speed of thermal, momentum and mass perturbations propagation in ideal gas are theoretically determined. It is shown that published experimental results for femtosecond laser heating of thin gold films and results of power modulation experiments in JET tokamak agree with the developed theory.