By- Moumita

13DTPH001,
Engineering
Dept. of Phy

Chakraborty
7th semester
Physics Dual Degree
s i cs , NITA

Introduction to the fourth state of matter

PLASMA

WHAT IS PLASMA?

A plasma is produced when a neutral gas is heated until interatomic

collisions become sufficiently violent that they detach electrons from
colliding atoms.
Implies potential energy of a particle with its nearest neighbouring
particles is weak compared to their kinetic energy (otherwise electrons
would be bound to ions) .

Not all media containing charged particles, however, can be classified

as plasmas. For a collection of interacting charged and neutral
particles to exhibit plasma behaviour it must satisfy certain conditions,
or criteria, for plasma existence.

FUNDAMENTAL PARAMETERS
A useful definition is as follows:
A plasma is a quasineutral gas of charged and neutral particles which exhibits
collective behaviour.
Three fundamental parameters characterize a plasma :
1. the particle density n (measured in particles per cubic meter),
2. the temperature T of each species (usually measured in eV, where 1 eV =
11605 K )
3. the steady state magnetic field B (measured in Tesla).

DEGREE OF IONISATION IN PLASMA

It depends mainly on temperature and is possible to be deduced as the

first approximation from Saha's equation for single ionized plasma in a
thermodynamic equilibrium
=C exp[Ui/kT] ;C~ 2.41021m3.
whereniis the ion concentration which have lost one electron,nnis the
neutral particles concentration,Uiis the ionization potential andTis the
plasma temperature.
The fractional ionization is very low. As the temperature is
raised, the degree of ionization remains low until is only few times KT.
The rises abruptly, and the gas is in plasma state.

QUASI-NEUTRALITY
Quasi-neutrality demands that

where and are ion and electron number density.

If a gas of electrons and ions (singly charged) has unequal numbers, there will be a net charge density, .

This will give rise to an electric field via

This results in a force on the charges tending to expel whichever species is in excess. That is, if
ni > ne , the E field causes ni to decrease, ne to increase tending to reduce the charge.

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
What is the difference between a neutral gas and a plasma?
In a neutral gas, particles interact only during a collision, i.e., when two
gas atoms feel the short-range van der Waals force, which decays with
the inter-particle distance as .
For most of the time, the gas atoms fly on a straight path independent of
the other atoms. This is quite different in a plasma.
The Coulomb force that describes the electrostatic interaction decays only
slowly as , which makes it a long-range force. This means that each
plasma particle interacts with a large number of other particles. Therefore,
plasmas show a simultaneous response of many particles to an external
stimulus.
In this sense, plasmas show collective behaviour, which means that the
macroscopic result to an external stimulus is the cooperative response of
many plasma particles.
Mutual shielding of plasma particles or wave processes are examples of

DEBYE SHEILDING

The Debye length provides a measure of the distance over which the influence of the electric field of
an individual charged particle (or of a surface at some nonzero potential) is felt by the other charged
particles inside the plasma.

The charged particles arrange themselves in such a way as to effectively shield any electrostatic fields
within a distance of the order of the Debye length.

This shielding of electrostatic fields is a consequence of the collective effects of the plasma particles.
The screening potential is :

The Debye length is given as

D

PLASMA FREQUENCY
An important plasma property is the stability of its macroscopic space charge
neutrality.

When a plasma is instantaneously disturbed from the equilibrium condition, the

resulting internal space charge fields give rise to collective particle motions that tend
to restore the original charge neutrality.

These collective motions are characterized by a natural frequency of oscillation

known as the plasma frequency.
The (electron) plasma frequency, is given by
=

CRITERIA FOR PLASMA

If L is a characteristic dimension of the plasma, then

Since the shielding effect is the result of the collective behaviour inside a
Debye sphere, it is necessary that the number of electrons inside a Debye
sphere be very large.

The macroscopic neutrality is considered to be the third criteria for plasma

existence.
The average time between electron-neutral collision must be large compared
to the characteristic time during which the plasma physical parameters are
changing.

THANK YOU