There are several practical situations in partially ionized plasmas when both collisionless (Landau) damping and electron-neutral collisions contribute to the attenuation of longitudinal waves. The longitudinal-wave dispersion relation is derived from Maxwell's equations and the linearized Boltzmann equation, in which electron-neutral collisions are represented by a Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook model that conserves particles locally. (The dispersion relation predicts that, for a given signal frequency ώ), an infinite number of complex wavenumbers kn can exist. Using Fourier–Laplace transform techniques, an integral representation for the electric field of the longitudinal waves is readily derived. Then, using theorems from complex variable theory, a modal expansion of the electric field can be made in terms of an infinite sum of confluent hypergeometric functions, whose arguments are proportional to the complex wavenumbers kn. It is demonstrated numerically that the spatial integral of the square of the electric field amplitude decreases as the electron-neutral collision frequency increases. Also, the amount of energy contained in the first few (lowest) modes, and the coupling between the modes, is examined as a function of plasma frequency, signal frequency and collision frequency.
Particle Motion in Longitudinal Waves. I Subluminal Waves