A New Approach to the Theory of Relaxation in Plasmas

A quantum mechanical treatment of relaxation phenomena in high temperature plasmas is developed. For a test particle moving with a momentum in a plasma the transition probability for the scattering to another momentum state due to interactions with plasma particles is calculated exactly. Both the binary and the collective interaction are automatically involved in the calculation which has not been the case in the previous theories. With use of this transition probability relaxation rates with exact numerical factors in the arguments of Coulomb logarithms are obtained. It is also shown that Kihara's connection formula can be derived in the present scheme. Thus a foundation is laid for the unified theory.