Proton stopping using a full conserving dielectric function in plasmas at any degeneracy

Area of Science:

• Plasma physics
• Quantum mechanics
• Astrophysical plasmas

Background:

• Accurate dielectric functions are crucial for understanding plasma behavior.
• Existing models like RPA and Mermin have limitations in fully conserving physical quantities.
• Electron-electron collisions significantly influence plasma properties, especially in degenerate regimes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, fully conserving dielectric function (FCDF) that incorporates density, momentum, and energy conservation laws.
• To account for electron-electron collisions in plasmas across all degeneracy levels.
• To assess the impact of the FCDF on calculating proton stopping power.

Main Methods:

• Development of a new dielectric function (FCDF) based on three fundamental conservation laws.
• Inclusion of electron-electron collision terms within the dielectric function formulation.
• Application of the FCDF to calculate proton stopping power in plasmas.

Main Results:

• The FCDF successfully reproduces results from the Random Phase Approximation (RPA) and Mermin dielectric functions.
• Proton stopping power calculations show minimal discrepancies between FCDF and RPA (up to 2%) and Mermin (up to 8%) for low collision frequencies.
• Discrepancies are primarily dependent on plasma collision frequency, not plasma degeneracy.

Conclusions:

• The developed FCDF offers a more complete description of plasma behavior by including conservation laws and electron-electron collisions.
• The FCDF provides accurate proton stopping power calculations, with minor deviations from established methods under typical conditions.
• The study highlights the importance of collision frequency in determining the differences between various dielectric functions.