Plasma (physics)

A Plasma lamp, illustrating some of the more complex phenomena of a plasma, including filamentation

In physics and chemistry, a plasma is typically an ionized gas, and is usually considered to be a distinct phase of matter. "Ionized" in this case means that at least one electron has been dissociated from a proportion of the atoms or molecules. The free electric charges make the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. This fourth state of matter was first identified by Sir William Crookes in 1879 and dubbed "plasma" by Irving Langmuir in 1928, perhaps because it reminded him of a blood plasma .

More specifically, a plasma is an electrically-conductive collection of charged particles that responds collectively to electromagnetic forces. Plasma typically takes the form of neutral gas-like clouds or charged ion beams, but may also include dust and grains (called dusty plasmas) They are typically formed by heating and ionizing a gas, stripping electrons away from atoms, thereby enabling the positive and negative charges to move freely.

Common plasmas

File:Solar-flares-(double).jpg

A solar coronal mass ejection blasts plasma throughout the solar system.

Plasmas are the most common phase of matter. The entire visible universe outside the solar system is plasma: all we can see are stars. Since the space between the stars is filled with a plasma, although a very sparse one (see interstellar- and intergalactic medium), essentially the entire volume of the universe is plasma (see astrophysical plasmas). In the solar system, the planet Jupiter accounts for most of the non-plasma, only about 0.1% of the mass and 10⁻¹⁵ of the volume within the orbit of Pluto. Alfvén also noted that due to their electric charge, very small grains also behave as ions and form part of a plasma (see dusty plasmas).

Commonly encountered forms of plasma include:

• Artificially produced
  • Used to etch dielectric layers in the production of integrated circuits
  • Inside fluorescent lamps (low energy lighting), neon signs
  • Rocket exhaust
  • The area in front of a spacecraft's heat shield during reentry into the atmosphere
  • Fusion energy research
  • The electric arc in an arc lamp or an arc welder
  • Plasma ball (sometimes called a plasma sphere or plasma globe)
• Earth plasmas
  • Flames (ie. fire)
  • Lightning
  • The ionosphere
  • The polar aurorae
• Space and astrophysical
  • The Sun and other stars (which are plasmas heated by nuclear fusion)
  • The solar wind
  • The interplanetary medium (the space between the planets)
  • The interstellar medium (the space between star systems)
  • The Intergalactic medium (the space between galaxies)
  • The Io-Jupiter flux-tube
  • Accretion disks
  • Interstellar nebulae

Characteristics

The term plasma is generally reserved for a system of charged particles large enough to behave as one. Even a partially ionized gas in which as little as 1% of the particles are ionized can have the characteristics of a plasma (i.e. respond to magnetic fields and be highly electrically conductive).

In technical terms, the typical characteristics of a plasma are:

1. Debye screening lengths that are short compared to the physical size of the plasma.
2. Large number of particles within a sphere with a radius of the Debye length.
3. Mean time between collisions usually is long when compared to the period of plasma oscillations.

Plasma scaling

Plasma characteristics can take on values varying by many orders of magnitude. The following chart deals only with conventional atomic plasmas and not other exotic phenomena, such as, quark gluon plasmas:

	Typical plasma scaling ranges: orders of magnitude (OOM)
Characteristic	Terrestrial plasmas	Cosmic plasmas
Size in metres (m)	10−6 m (lab plasmas) to: 102 m (lightning) (~8 OOM)	10−6 m (spacecraft sheath) to 1025 m (intergalactic nebula) (~31 OOM)
Lifetime in seconds (s)	10−12 s (laser-produced plasma) to: 107 s (fluorescent lights) (~19 OOM)	101 s (solar flares) to: 1017 s (intergalactic plasma) (~17 OOM)
Density in particles per cubic metre	107 to: 1021 (inertial confinement plasma)	1030 (stellar core) to: 100 (i.e., 1) (intergalactic medium)
Temperature in kelvins (K)	~0 K (Crystalline non-neutral plasma) to: 108 K (magnetic fusion plasma)	102 K (aurora) to: 107 K (Solar core)
Magnetic fields in teslas (T)	10−4 T (Lab plasma) to: 103 T (pulsed-power plasma)	10−12 T (intergalactic medium) to: 107 T (Solar core)

Temperatures

The central electrode of a plasma lamp, showing a glowing blue plasma streaming upwards. The colors are a result of the relaxation of electrons in excited states to lower energy states after they have recombined with ions. These processes emit light in a spectrum characteristic of the gas being excited.

The defining characteristic of a plasma is ionization. The degree of ionization is determined by the electron temperature relative to the ionization energy (and more weakly by the density) in accordance with the Saha equation. In most cases the electrons are close enough to thermal equilibrium that their temperature is relatively well-defined, even when there is a significant deviation from a Maxwellian energy distribution function, for example due to UV radiation, energetic particles, or strong electric fields.

A plasma is sometimes referred to as being hot if it is nearly fully ionized, or cold if only a small fraction of the gas molecules are ionized (for example 1%). Even in a "cold" plasma the electron temperature is still typically several thousand degrees. Plasmas utilized in plasma technology ("technological plasmas") are usually cold in this sense. They are often maintained by accelerating the free electrons with electric fields so that they have enough energy to produce more electrons through collisional ionization of neutral atoms. The electric fields may be coupled into the plasma inductively or capacitively or through microwaves. Common applications of cold plasmas include plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, plasma ion doping, and reactive ion etching.

Because of the large difference in mass, the electrons come to thermodynamic equilibrium among themselves much faster than they come into equilibrium with the ions or neutral atoms. For this reason the ion temperature may be very different from (usually lower than) the electron temperature. This is especially common in cold plasmas, where the ions are often near the ambient temperature.

Densities

Next to the temperature, which is of fundamental importance for the very existence of a plasma, the most important property is the density. The word "plasma density" by itself usually refers to the electron density, that is, the number of free electrons per unit volume. The ion density is related to this by the average charge state $\langle Z\rangle$ of the ions through $n_{e}=\langle Z\rangle n_{i}$. (See quasineutrality below.) The third important quantity is the density of neutrals $n_{0}$. In a hot plasma this is small, but may still determine important physics. The degree of ionization is $n_{i}/(n_{0}+n_{i})$.

Potentials

File:Lightning hits tree - NOAA.jpg

Lightning is an example of plasma present at Earth's surface. Typically, lightning discharges 30 thousand amps, at up to 100 million volts, and emits light, radio waves, x-rays and even gamma rays [1]. Plasma temperatures in lightning can approach 28,000 kelvins and electron densities may exceed 10²⁴/m³.

Since plasmas are very good conductors, electric potentials play an important role. The potential as it exists on average in the space between charged particles, independent of the question of how it can be measured, is called the plasma potential or the space potential. If an electrode is inserted into a plasma, its potential will generally lie considerably below the plasma potential due to the development of a Debye sheath. Due to the good electrical conductivity, the electric fields in plasmas tend to be very small. This results in the important concept of quasineutrality, which says that it is a very good approximation to assume that the density of negative charges is equal to the density of positive charges over large volumes of the plasma ($n_{e}=\langle Z\rangle n_{i}$), but on the scale of the Debye length there can be charge imbalance. In the special case that double layers are formed, the charge separation can extend some tens of Debye lengths.

The magnitude of the potentials and electric fields must be determined by means other than simply finding the net charge density. A common example is to assume that the electrons satisfy the Boltzmann relation, $n_{e}\propto e^{e\Phi /k_{B}T_{e}}$. Differentiating this relation provides a means to calculate the electric field from the density: ${\vec {E}}=(k_{B}T_{e}/e)(\nabla n_{e}/n_{e})$.

It is, of course, possible to produce a plasma that is not quasineutral. An electron beam, for example, has only negative charges. The density of a non-neutral plasma must generally be very low, or it must be very small, otherwise it will be dissipated by the repulsive electrostatic force.

In astrophysical plasmas, Debye screening prevents electric fields from directly affecting the plasma over large distances (ie. greater than the Debye length). But the existence of charged particles causes the plasma to generate and be affected by magnetic fields. This can and does cause extremely complex behavior, such as the generation of plasma double layers, an object that separates charge over a few tens of Debye lengths. The dynamics of plasmas interacting with external and self-generated magnetic fields are studied in the academic discipline of magnetohydrodynamics.

Comparison of plasma and gas phases

Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter. It is distinct from the three lower-energy phases of matter; solid, liquid, and gas, although it is closely related to the gas phase in that it also has no definite form or volume. There is still some disagreement as to whether a plasma is a distinct state of matter or simply a type of gas. Most physicists consider a plasma to be more than a gas because of a number of distinct properties including the following:

Property	Gas	Plasma
Electrical Conductivity	Very low	Very high For many purposes the electric field in a plasma may be treated as zero, although when current flows the voltage drop, though small, is finite, and density gradients are usually associated with an electric field according to the Boltzmann relation. The possibility of currents couples the plasma strongly to magnetic fields, which are responsible for a large variety of structures such as filaments, sheets, and jets. Collective phenomena are common because the electric and magnetic forces are both long-range and potentially many orders of magnitude stronger than gravitational forces.
Independently acting species	One	Two or three Electrons, ions, and neutrals can be distinguished by the sign of their charge so that they behave independently in many circumstances, having different velocities or even different temperatures, leading to new types of waves and instabilities, among other things
Velocity distribution	Maxwellian	May be non-Maxwellian Whereas collisional interactions always lead to a Maxwellian velocity distribution, electric fields influence the particle velocities differently. The velocity dependence of the Coulomb collision cross section can amplify these differences, resulting in phenomena like two-temperature distributions and run-away electrons.
Interactions	Binary Two-particle collisions are the rule, three-body collisions extremely rare.	Collective Each particle interacts simultaneously with many others. These collective interactions are about ten times more important than binary collisions.

Complex plasma phenomena

The remnant of Tycho's Supernova, a huge ball of expanding plasma. Langmuir coined the name plasma because of its similarity to blood plasma, and Hannes Alfvén noted its cellular nature. Note also the filamentary blue outer shell of X-ray emitting high-speed electrons.

Plasma may exhibit complex behaviour. And just as plasma properties scale over many orders of magnitude (see table above), so do these complex features. Many of these features were first studied in the laboratory, and in more recent years, have been applied to, and recognised throughout the universe. Some of these features include:

• Filamentation, the striations or "stringy things" seen in a "plasma ball", the aurora, lightning, electric arcs, and nebulae. They are caused by larger current densities, and are also called magnetic ropes or plasma cables.

• Double layers, localised charge separation regions that have a large potential difference across the layer, and a vanishing electric field on either side. Double layers are found between adjacent plasmas regions with different physical characteristics, and in current carrying plasmas. The accelerate both ions and electrons.

• Birkeland currents, a magnetic-field-aligned electric current, first observed in the Earth's aurora, and also found in plasma filaments.

• Circuits. Birkeland currents imply electric circuits, that follow Kirchhoff's circuit laws. Circuits have a resistance and inductance, and the behaviour of the plasma depends on the entire circuit. Such circuits also store inductive energy, and should the circuit be disrupted, for example, by a plasma instability, the inductive energy will be released in the plasma.

• Cellular structure. Plasma double layers may separate regions with different properties such as magnetization, density, and temperature, resulting in cell-like regions. Examples include the magnetosphere, heliosphere, and heliospheric current sheet.

• Critical ionization velocity in which the relative velocity between an ionized plasma and a neutral gas, may cause further ionization of the gas, resulting in a greater influence of electomagnetic forces.

Ultracold plasmas

It is also possible to create ultracold plasmas, by using lasers to trap and cool neutral atoms to temperatures of 1 mK or lower. Another laser then ionizes the atoms by giving each of the outermost electrons just enough energy to escape the electrical attraction of its parent ion.

The key point about ultracold plasmas is that by manipulating the atoms with lasers, the kinetic energy of the liberated electrons can be controlled. Using standard pulsed lasers, the electron energy can be made to correspond to a temperature of as low as 0.1 K ­ a limit set by the frequency bandwidth of the laser pulse. The ions, however, retain the millikelvin temperatures of the neutral atoms. This type of non-equilibrium ultracold plasma evolves rapidly, and many fundamental questions about its behaviour remain unanswered. Experiments conducted so far have revealed surprising dynamics and recombination behaviour that are pushing the limits of our knowledge of plasma physics.

Mathematical descriptions

Plasmas may be usefully described with various levels of detail (see Plasma parameters). However the plasma itself is described, if electric or magnetic fields are present, then Maxwell's equations will be needed to describe them. The coupling of the description of a conductive fluid to electromagnetic fields is known generally as magnetohydrodynamics, or simply MHD.

Fluid

The simplest possibility is to treat the plasma as a single fluid governed by the Navier Stokes Equations. A more general description is the two-fluid picture, where the ions and electrons are considered to be distinct.

Kinetic

For some cases the fluid description is not sufficient. Kinetic models include information on distortions of the velocity distribution functions with respect to a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. This may be important when currents flow, when waves are involved, or when gradients are very steep.

Particle-in-cell

Particle-in-cell (PIC) models include kinetic information by following the trajectories of a large number of individual particles. Charge and current densities are determined by summing the particles in cells which are small compared to the problem at hand but still contain many particles. The electric and magnetic fields are found from the charge and current densities with appropriate boundary conditions. PIC codes for plasma applications were developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1950's. Although often more calculationally intensive than alternative models, they are relatively easy to understand and program and can be very general.

Fields of active research

Hall effect thruster. The electric field in a plasma double layer is so effective at accelerating ions, that electric fields are used in ion drives

This is just a partial list of topics. A more complete and organised list can be found on the Web site for Plasma science and technology .

• Plasma theory
  • Plasma equilibria and stability
  • Plasma interactions with waves and beams
  • Guiding center
  • adiabatic invariant
  • Debye sheath
  • Coulomb collision
• Plasmas in nature
  • The Earth's ionosphere
  • Space plasmas, e.g. Earth's plasmasphere (an inner portion of the magnetosphere dense with plasma)
  • plasma cosmology
  • Plasma Astronomy
• Plasma sources
• Dusty Plasmas
• Plasma diagnostics
  • Thomson scattering
  • Langmuir probe
  • Spectroscopy
  • Interferometry
  • Ionospheric heating
  • Incoherent scatter radar
• Plasma applications
  • Fusion power
    • Magnetic fusion energy (MFE) — tokamak, stellarator, reversed field pinch, magnetic mirror, dense plasma focus
    • Inertial fusion energy (IFE) (also Inertial confinement fusion — ICF)
    • Plasma-based weaponry
  • Industrial plasmas
    • plasma chemistry
    • plasma processing
    • plasma display

See also

A candle flame. Fire can be considered to be a very low temperature partial plasma.

• Plasma parameters
• Magnetohydrodynamics
• Electric field screening
• List of plasma physicists
• Large Helical Device
• Important publications in plasma physics

External links

• Plasma a brief introduction for non-specialists, using the fluorescent tube as example. Linked file about the history of the word "plasma" and various application fields,   Plasma Physics — History.

• Plasmas: the Fourth State of Matter
• Plasma Science and Technology
• Plasma on the Internet comprehensive list of plasma related links.
• Introduction to Plasma Physics: a graduate level lecture course given by Richard Fitzpatrick
• An overview of plasma links and applications
• NRL Plasma Formulary online (or an html version)
• Plasma Coalition page
• Plasma Material Interaction
• How to build a Stable Plasmoid at One Atmosphere (requires pre-ignition)
• How to build a Stable Plasmoid with this Enhanced Generator (self-igniting)
• How to make a glowing ball of plasma in your microwave with a grape
• Microwave Grape Plasma (Video)