Kinetic eigenmodes and discrete spectrum of plasma oscillations in a weakly collisional plasma

The damping of plasma oscillations in a weakly collisional plasma is revisi ted using a Fokker-Planck collision operator. It is shown that the Case-Van Kampen continuous spectrum is eliminated in the limit of zero collision fr equency and replaced by a discrete spectrum. The Landau-damped solutions ar e recovered in this limit, but as true eigenmodes of the weakly collisional system. For small but nonzero collision frequency, the spectra and eigenmo des are qualitatively different from their counterparts in the collisionles s theory. These results are consistent with recent experimental findings.