NONLOCAL ELECTRON HEAT RELAXATION IN A PLASMA SHOCK AT ARBITRARY IONIZATION NUMBER

A recently obtained nonlocal expression for the electron heat flux val id for arbitrary ionization numbers Z is used to study the structure o f a plane shock wave in a fully ionized plasma. Nonlocal effects are o nly important in the foot of the electronic preheating region, where t he electron temperature gradient is the steepest. The results are quan tified as a function of a characteristic Knudsen number of that region . This work also generalizes to arbitrary values of Z previous results on plasma shock wave structure.