Plasma transport by carrier electrons: classical coefficients across ionization and magnetization
Abstract
The classical transport of magnetic field and electron energy in a plasma requires the use of coefficients that depend on plasma ionization Z and magnetization χ. This paper explains these scalings through studying the electron velocities responsible for each transport process. Both electron-electron collisions and magnetization affect higher velocity electron populations preferentially, lowering the carrier velocities; transport carried by a high energy electron population is therefore more suppressed by both electron-electron collisions and magnetization than transport carried by lower velocities. Carrier Hall parameters ψ=χf(Z) are defined for each coefficient such that magnetization can be described independent of ionization. An analytic idealized coefficient with a single rigid carrier velocity reproduces many of the characteristics of the coefficients, in particular thermal conductivity, but overestimates plasma magnetization due to magnetization itself lowering the carrier velocity. A single moving carrier model improves agreement, but cannot describe the smoothness of the Righi-Leduc coefficient, which originates from being an average over a range of carrier velocities. This is the first paper in a 3-part series; the subsequent papers will extend the carrier picture to non-local heat-flux (paper 2) and non-local magnetic field evolution (paper 3).
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BibTeX
@misc{walsh2026plasma,
title = {{Plasma transport by carrier electrons: classical coefficients across ionization and magnetization}},
author = {C. A. Walsh},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.30303},
eprint = {2610.30303},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30303},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Plasma transport by carrier electrons: classical coefficients across ionization and magnetization
AU - C. A. Walsh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.30303
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30303
AB - The classical transport of magnetic field and electron energy in a plasma requires the use of coefficients that depend on plasma ionization Z and magnetization χ. This paper explains these scalings through studying the electron velocities responsible for each transport process. Both electron-electron collisions and magnetization affect higher velocity electron populations preferentially, lowering the carrier velocities; transport carried by a high energy electron population is therefore more suppressed by both electron-electron collisions and magnetization than transport carried by lower velocities. Carrier Hall parameters ψ=χf(Z) are defined for each coefficient such that magnetization can be described independent of ionization. An analytic idealized coefficient with a single rigid carrier velocity reproduces many of the characteristics of the coefficients, in particular thermal conductivity, but overestimates plasma magnetization due to magnetization itself lowering the carrier velocity. A single moving carrier model improves agreement, but cannot describe the smoothness of the Righi-Leduc coefficient, which originates from being an average over a range of carrier velocities. This is the first paper in a 3-part series; the subsequent papers will extend the carrier picture to non-local heat-flux (paper 2) and non-local magnetic field evolution (paper 3).
ER -