Impact of ion-electron collisions on nonlocal ion heat conduction, viscous stress, and diffusion

Abstract

By applying a first-principles reduced kinetic method, this work demonstrates the impact of ion-electron collisions on ion transport for strongly inhomogeneous plasmas in the nonlocal regime, where collisionality is insufficient to enforce local thermal equilibrium due to sharp gradients. Ion heat conduction and viscous stress in both unmagnetized and magnetized plasmas are considered, as well as inter-species diffusion in multi-species plasmas. Most notably, even for equal ion and electron temperatures, ion-electron collisions are found to substantially modify the peak nonlocal heat flow, whereas nonlocal preheats are strongly suppressed since streaming suprathermal particles are further out in the tail of the cold ion distribution where ion-electron collisions become dominant.