Some agreement needs to be made about oscillating electrons in IG plasma. That electrons in plasma oscillate is a given, this is explained in numerous citations, I'm not sure why
papageno refuses to accept this. Even if as he claims the entire plasma were oscillating (which it is not), it would still be the electrons in the plasma doing the oscillating. Given the relative mass of eletrons to ions, electrons will oscillate much more and ions will remain relatively static.
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Originally Posted by papageno
The plasma oscillations occur on length-scales that are much large than the wavelength of a visible-light photon, and would not have any effect on photon-electron scattering.
These plasma oscillations are oscillations in the charge density of the plasma, and are not the result of particles oscillating about some point.***
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The
wiki defines 'plasma frequency' as 'the frequency with which electrons oscillate when their charge density is not equal to the ion charge density', and defines the terms of this equation as the density of electrons(n), the electric charge(e), and the mass of the electron (m). A clarification is also given:
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Note that the above formula is derived under the approximation that the ion mass is infinite. This is generally a good approximation, as the electrons are so much lighter than ions.
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The
first paragraph here states the plasma model precisely as
lyndonashmore has been describing, restoring forces and all.
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In the simplest example of such a perturbation, the electrons might be offset from the less mobile (because of their mass) ions. The electrons, then, would execute simple harmonic motion about their equilibrium positions.
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This more accurately describes a 'cold plasma' model where we can ignore the initial velocities of the particles. I am interested to know how SHM is described in a non-relativistic 'hot plasma' model such as we are dealing with.
Now as I understand,
lyndonashmore assumes that since our photon-electron
collisions are relativistic, then we can assume rest mass and SHM. I would like to see more proof that this is correct.
In any case, I think we can all agree now that electrons oscillate in plasma.