Quantum Kinetics of Fast-Electron Inelastic Collisions in Partially-Ionized Plasmas
Plasma Physics
2026-03-20 v1 Quantum Physics
Abstract
Fast electrons in partially ionized plasmas lose energy through inelastic collisions with bound electrons. While the mean energy loss is well described by stopping-power theory, fluctuations associated with discrete excitation and ionization events produce energy straggling and an additional longitudinal diffusion in momentum space. We incorporate this effect into fast-electron kinetics through a derived Fokker-Planck operator whose coefficients are obtained from ab initio quantum many-body simulations. We demonstrate that neglecting inelastic energy diffusion in partially ionized D-Ar plasmas can underestimate primary runaway-electron generation by several orders of magnitude.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.18715,
title = {Quantum Kinetics of Fast-Electron Inelastic Collisions in Partially-Ionized Plasmas},
author = {Yeongsun Lee and Pavel Aleynikov and Jong-Kyu Park},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.18715},
year = {2026}
}