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Updated: Oct 1, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
Thermodynamics of photons in relativistic e+e- gamma plasmas
1Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/mmedvede/
Abstract:
Thermodynamic and spectral properties of a photon gas in e(+)e(-)gamma plasmas are studied. The effect of a finite effective mass of a photon, associated with the plasma frequency cutoff, is self-consistently included. In the ultrarelativistic plasma, the photon spectrum turns out to be universal with the temperature normalized plasma frequency cutoff as a fundamental constant independent of plasma parameters. Such a universality does not hold in the nonrelativistic plasma.
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