http://arxiv.org/abs/2201.03376
A plasma whose Coulomb-collision rate is very small may relax on a shorter time scale to non-Maxwellian quasi-equilibria, which, nevertheless, have a universal form, with dependence on initial conditions retained only via an infinite set of Casimir invariants enforcing phase-volume conservation. These are distributions derived by Lynden-Bell (1967) via a statistical-mechanical entropy-maximisation procedure, assuming perfect mixing of phase-space elements. To show that these equilibria are reached dynamically, one must derive an effective `collisionless collision integral’ for which they are fixed points — unique and inevitable provided the integral has an appropriate H-theorem. We describe how such collision integrals are derived and what assumptions are required for them to have a closed form, how to prove the H-theorems for them, and why, for a system carrying sufficiently large electric-fluctuation energy, collisionless relaxation should be fast. It is suggested that collisionless dynamics may favour maximising entropy locally in phase space before converging to global maximum-entropy states.
R. Ewart, A. Brown, T. Adkins, et. al.
Tue, 11 Jan 22
19/95
Comments: 35 pages, submitted to JPP
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