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Measurements of viscosity in pure-electron plasmas
1Physics Department, University of California, San Diego, California 92093-0319, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|October 3, 2001
Abstract:
Measurements of the viscosity in quiescent magnetized pure-electron plasmas are up to 10(8) times larger than predicted by classical collisional theory. This strong viscosity is due to long-range " E x B drift collisions" between electrons separated by up to a Debye length. Recent theories of long-range collisions show order-of-magnitude agreement with the measurements, but do not give the observed dependence on the plasma column length. A simple empirical scaling law fits the length and magnetic field dependence surprisingly well.