Langevin representation of Coulomb collisions for bi-Maxwellian plasmas (Q983000)

The authors consider a Fokker-Planck description of a weakly collisional plasma for the case in which the scatterers are described by a bi-Maxwellian distribution function. They calculate the Rosenbluth potentials, appearing in drift and diffusion term, for the bi-Maxwellian distribution function, obtaining an explicit expression in terms of triple hypergeometric functions. The equation is used to study proton temperature isotropization and compared with a previous model based on bi-Maxwellian transport coefficients. It is further applied to a situation in which temperature anisotropy is continuously driven from an external force.