New Approach to Irreversible Transport Phenomena in Plasma Dynamics

A factorization theorem is demonstrated for special types of contributions to the time-dependent collision operator G00(τ) which plays a central role in the classical master equation derived by I. Prigogine and P. Résibois; this theorem expresses the mutual independence of two subgroups of particles when these groups are noninteracting with each other during a given time interval (τi, τj) of the collision process. The theorem is applied to rederive in a very direct way the kinetic equation of an homogeneous stable plasma, obtained first by R. Balescu. Other possible applications of the method are also discussed.