Kinetic Eigenmodes and Discrete Spectrum of Plasma Oscillations in a Weakly Collisional Plasma

Abstract

The damping of plasma oscillations in a weakly collisional plasma is revisited using a Fokker-Planck collision operator. It is shown that the Case--Van Kampen continuous spectrum is eliminated in the limit of zero collision frequency and replaced by a discrete spectrum. The Landau-damped solutions are recovered in this limit, but as true eigenmodes of the weakly collisional system. For small but nonzero collision frequency, the spectra and eigenmodes are qualitatively different from their counterparts in the collisionless theory. These results are consistent with recent experimental findings.