Third-order transport coefficients for charged particle swarms

Momentum-transfer theory has been used to obtain a relationship between the nth order tensorial transport coefficients in a swarm experiment, the (n - 1) th derivative of the mobility, and the nth derivative of the reaction r ate coefficient. Elastic, inelastic, and reactive collisions for gas mixtur es have been taken into consideration. Numerical comparisons show that the results obtained from this relationship are in good agreement with those ob tained by solution of the Boltzmann equation. Finally, we have analyzed the structure of the third-order tensorial transport coefficient by applying m omentum-transfer theory and group theory; both approaches show that in gene ral there are three independent components of this rank-three tensor. (C) 1 999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(99)50805- 2].