Collective effects in bremsstrahlung in plasmas

Abstract

The results of recent developments in the theory of fluctuations in plasmas show that the previously used theory of bremsstrahlung is incomplete and the exact expressions for bremsstrahlung should include transition bremsstrahlung. The collective effects in bremsstrahlung known previously as Debye screening are changed to a qualitatively different structure, which removes the effect of ion polarization in bremsstrahlung and introduces a new effective polarization which depends on an effective ion charge and electron velocity. The results may be relevant for applications in plasmas when the wavelength is greater than the Debye length. It is shown that for the problem of photon transport in the solar interior the correct collective corrections to the bremsstrahlung change the opacity by only about −0·35%, which is less than was calculated previously when collective effects in bremsstrahlung where estimated without taking recent results of plasma fluctuation theory into account.