Longitudinal oscillations in a nonextensive relativistic plasma

Abstract

The dispersion relation of longitudinal electrostatic oscillations in a relativistic plasma is studied in the context of the nonextensive statistics formalism proposed by Tsallis [C. Tsallis, J. Stat. Phys. {\bf 52}, 479 (1988)], where nonextensivity is characterized by a parameter $q$ in Tsallis's entropy. $q=1$ corresponds to the usual Boltzmann-Gibbs, extensive statistics formalism. In the nonrelativistic regime, normalizability of the equilibrium distribution function implies that $-1\leq q\leq\infty$. We show that in the relativistic regime much tighter constraints must be satisfied, namely $0\leq q \leq 1+ k_B T/mc^2$, where $k_B$ is the Boltzmann constant, $T$ is the temperature of the plasma, and $m$ is the particle mass. Then we study longitudinal oscillations in a proton-electron plasma, assuming immobile protons, and electrons whose distribution function maximizes Tsallis's entropy. The dispersion relation of these oscillations is written in integral form for the long wavelength limit. Explicit expressions in terms of generalized hypergeometric functions can be found for all possibles values of $q$ in the ultra-relativistic regime.