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Available energy of plasmas with small fluctuations

Plasma Physics 2024-11-20 v1

Abstract

The available energy of a plasma is defined as the maximum amount by which the plasma energy can be lowered by volume-preserving rearrangements in phase space, a so-called Gardner re-stacking. A general expression is derived for the available energy of a nearly homogeneous plasma and is shown to be closely related to the Helmholtz free energy, which it can never exceed. A number of explicit examples are given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.12599,
  title  = {Available energy of plasmas with small fluctuations},
  author = {P. Helander and R. J. J. Mackenbach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.12599},
  year   = {2024}
}