The viscosity of charged particles in the weakly ionized plasma with power-law distributions

TL;DR

This paper derives new expressions for the viscosity coefficients of charged particles in weakly ionized plasmas with power-law q-distributions, showing their dependence on q-parameters and recovering Maxwellian results when q approaches 1.

Contribution

It provides the first derivation of viscosity coefficients for plasma particles with q-distributions, extending classical results to non-Maxwellian plasmas.

Findings

Viscosity coefficients depend strongly on q-parameters.

Results recover classical Maxwellian plasma viscosities as q approaches 1.

Method applicable to plasmas with kappa-distributions.

Abstract

We study the viscosity of light charged particles in weakly ionized plasma with the power-law q-distributions by using the Boltzmann equation of transport and the motion equation of hydrodynamics. The nonequilibrium plasma is considered to be space inhomogeneous and without magnetic field. We derive the expressions of the viscosity coefficients of the electrons and the ions in the q-distributed plasma, including the first and the second viscosity coefficients respectively. It is shown that these new viscosity coefficients depend strongly on the q-parameters, and when we take the limit of q to 1, they perfectly return to those in the plasma with a Maxwellian distribution. The discussions presented in this paper can also be applied to the plasmas with the kappa-distributions.