Projection-operator methods for classical transport in magnetized plasmas. Part 1. Linear response, the Braginskii equations and fluctuating hydrodynamics

Abstract

An introduction to the use of projection-operator methods for the derivation of classical fluid transport equations for weakly coupled, magnetised, multispecies plasmas is given. In the present work, linear response (small perturbations from an absolute Maxwellian) is addressed. In the Schrödinger representation, projection onto the hydrodynamic subspace leads to the conventional linearized Braginskii fluid equations when one restricts attention to fluxes of first order in the gradients, while the orthogonal projection leads to an alternative derivation of the Braginskii correction equations for the non-hydrodynamic part of the one-particle distribution function. The projection-operator approach provides an appealingly intuitive way of discussing the derivation of transport equations and interpreting the significance of the various parts of the perturbed distribution function; it is also technically more concise. A special case of the Weinhold metric is used to provide a covariant representation of the formalism; this allows a succinct demonstration of the Onsager symmetries for classical transport. The Heisenberg representation is used to derive a generalized Langevin system whose mean recovers the linearized Braginskii equations but that also includes fluctuating forces. Transport coefficients are simply related to the two-time correlation functions of those forces, and physical pictures of the various transport processes are naturally couched in terms of them. A number of appendices review the traditional Chapman–Enskog procedure; record some properties of the linearized Landau collision operator; discuss the covariant representation of the hydrodynamic projection; provide an example of the calculation of some transport effects; describe the decomposition of the stress tensor for magnetised plasma; introduce the linear eigenmodes of the Braginskii equations; and, with the aid of several examples, mention some caveats for the use of projection operators.