Kinetic Equation for a Classical Plasma

The behavior of a fully ionized plasma of nonrelativistic electrons (neutralized by a background of positive charge) which is slightly disturbed from equilibrium is treated by a method that exploits the electron-electron correlations that are present in equilibrium to provide both a short- as well as a long-distance cutoff, and to provide a damping mechanism that dominates the usual Landau damping at small k. To obtain a closed set of equations for the deviations from equilibrium of the one- and two-particle distribution functions a product assumption is made for the deviation from equilibrium of the three-particle distribution function. It is shown that the nonlinear correlations present in the rigorous pair distribution function are sufficient to derive the linearized Fokker-Planck equation. The electron-electron correlations in equilibrium are shown to give rise to a damping of plasma oscillations at long wavelength that dominates the Landau damping which is also present.