Stopping power theory for screened Coulomb binary collisions in a nondegenerate plasma

The stopping power of a nondegenerate, quasineutral plasma is evaluated both numerically and analytically for energetic charged particles which undergo screened Coulomb collisions as a result of Debye shielding. The numerical evaluation is exact within the framework of the binary collision approximation and accurately takes into account both the plasma particle velocity distribution and the profile of the screened Coulomb interaction potential. The stopping power of plasma electrons is found to be considerably smaller than reported by Li and Petrasso [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 3059 (1993)].