A pure non-neutral plasma under an external harmonic field: equilibrium thermodynamics and chaos

TL;DR

This paper investigates the equilibrium thermodynamics and chaotic dynamics of a pure non-neutral plasma confined by an external harmonic field, revealing non-extensive behavior, two asymptotic states, and strong chaos characterized by Lyapunov exponents.

Contribution

It provides a thermo-statistical analysis of a simple non-neutral plasma model, identifying its non-extensive thermodynamic limit and analyzing its chaotic behavior through numerical simulations.

Findings

Existence of two asymptotic states: Brillouin steady state and high-temperature harmonic oscillator gas.

The thermodynamic limit is non-extensive, with energy scaling as N^{7/3}.

The system exhibits strong chaos with Lyapunov exponents peaking during state transitions.

Abstract

Motivated by the precedent study of Ordenes-Huanca and Velazquez [JSTAT \textbf{093303} (2016)], we address the study of a simple model of a pure non-neutral plasma: a system of identical non-relativistic charged particles confined under an external harmonic field with frequency $\omega$. We perform the equilibrium thermo-statistical analysis in the framework of continuum approximation. This study reveals the existence of two asymptotic limits: the known Brillouin steady state at zero temperature, and the gas of harmonic oscillators in the limit of high temperatures. The non-extensive character of this model is evidenced by the associated thermodynamic limit, $N\rightarrow+\infty: U/N^{7/3}=const$, which coincides with the thermodynamic limit of a self-gravitating system of non-relativistic point particles in presence of Newtonian gravitation. Afterwards, the dynamics of this model is analyzed through numerical simulations. It is verified the agreement of thermo-statistical estimations and the temporal expectation values of the same macroscopic observables. The system chaoticity is addressed via numerical computation of Lyapunov exponents in the framework of the known \emph{tangent dynamics}. The temperature dependence of Lyapunov exponent $\lambda$ approaches to zero in the two asymptotic limits of this model, reaching its maximum during the transit between them. The chaos of the present model is very strong, since its rate is faster than the characteristic timescale of the microscopic dynamics $\tau_{dyn}=1/\omega$. A qualitative analysis suggests that such a strong chaoticity cannot be explained in terms of collision events because of their respective characteristic timescales are quite different, $\tau_{ch}\propto \tau_{dyn}/N^{1/4}$ and $\tau_{coll}\propto \tau_{dyn}$.