ON THE INTERPRETATION OF A COMPUTER EXPER IMENT ON CLASSICAL COULOMB PLASMA

The conclusions on the violations of some of the basic principles of s tatistical mechanics and physical kinetics - reported by Mayorov, Tkac hev, and Yakovlenko (thereafter referred to as MTY) in Usp. Fiz. Nauk 164(3) 297 (1994) [Physics-Uspekhi 62 (3) 276 (1994)] - are shown to b e insufficiently substantiated. MTY have drawn these conclusions from the results of their computer experiment with a classical Coulomb plas ma; however, these data are found to admit an alternative interpretati on. The alleged necessity to reject the detailed balancing principle i s shown not to be an inevitable consequence of the MTY simulation resu lts; this necessity is also discarded by the microscopic process analy sis in the present study. Contrary to the MTY implicit assumption, the behaviour of the considered plasma is substantially dependent on near -wall phenomena. A limiting case of the considered system (two opposit e charge-sign particles confined in a closed space) is analyzed: the p article collisions with perfect-reflector walls are found to make the system behaviour ergodic and to lead to a distribution function slopin g down in the domain of negative center-of-mass energies.