Two-Temperature and Thermal Plasma Kinetic Theories

The main objective of this paper is to establish links between two different plasma kinetic theories. We start by summarizing a two-temperature kinetic theory of multicomponent magnetized reactive plasmas, where electrons and heavy species have their own temperature. The Knudsen number is taken to be proportional to the square root of the mass ratio, and polyatomic species are taken into account. We next summarize the one-temperature kinetic theory of multicomponent magnetized reactive plasmas when the mass ratio remains of order unity. The complex tensorial structure of the transport fluxes is addressed, as well as the symmetry properties of the multicomponent transport coefficients. We then establish new links between these two theories by using the two-temperature scaling in the transport linear system obtained from the one-temperature kinetic theory. By expanding the solutions of the transport linear systems in terms of the Knudsen number, the flux structure of the two-temperature theory is recovered from the one-temperature theory as well as the second-order corrector terms. We also address the solution of transport linear systems by using fast and convergent iterative algorithms and their improvement for ionized mixtures.