Kinetic Equations for Fully Ionized, Inhomogeneous Plasmas

Abstract

It is shown that, in the sense of certain procedures for successively approximating the quantum Liouville equation, the Boltzmann-Vlasov-Maxwell equations for the description of the fully ionized plasma are a natural first approximation. The nature of some of the approximations inherent in the use of such a description of the plasma is indicated, but little attention is given to their quantitative evaluation. An $H$ theorem for the particle-photon system is demonstrated.