Aj. Peurrung et J. Fajans, A LIMITATION TO THE ANALOGY BETWEEN PURE ELECTRON PLASMAS AND 2-DIMENSIONAL INVISCID FLUIDS, Physics of fluids. B, Plasma physics, 5(12), 1993, pp. 4295-4298
Thermal corrections to EXB drifts cause small structures in pure elect
ron plasmas to smear. This smearing breaks the strict analogy between
the behavior of pure electron plasmas and the behavior of two-dimensio
nal inviscid fluids. The causes and consequences of this smearing are
discussed, a criterion for the validity of the plasma/fluid analogy is
constructed, and experimental examples of the failure of the analogy
are presented. The criterion indicates that fluid-like behavior can pe
rsist to scale lengths far smaller than the normal ''collective'' beha
vior limit.