Dispersion relations in weakly degenerate plasmas

From a quantum mechanical point of view, electrons in laser produced plasma s can be regarded as weakly degenerate. For instance, for a plasma with ele ctron density of 10(22) cm(-3) and electron temperature of 1 eV, Sommerfeld 's parameter is between 1 and 2. Under these conditions the usual dispersio n relations for waves in plasmas need be corrected to account for degenerac y. In the present work, starting from the transport equation with a simplif ied version of the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck collision kernel the propaga tion of waves impinging on a plasma with weakly degenerate electrons is inv estigated and dispersion relations accounting for degeneracy are derived. T hese dispersion relations give the classical ones in the limit for Sommerfe ld's parameter approaching zero. A shift of the wavenumber value and a non- collisional damping due to degeneracy effects are predicted which render a weakly degenerate plasma more opaque to radiation than a non-degenerate one . (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.