THEORY OF THE LINEAR FOKKER-PLANCK COLLISION OPERATOR.
Abstract
The linearized Fokker-Planck Collision integral with coulomb interaction is expanded in terms of surface spherical harmonics. The radial part of the distribution function is shown to be governed by a set of decoupled differential-integral equations. The differential operators are shown to be self-adjoint while the integral operators are symmetry and completely continuous. The spectrum of the eigenvalues contains, on top of discrete points, a continuous part ranging from zero to minus infinity. The discrete part of the spectrum is obtained by requiring that the corresponding eigenvectors have a definite asymptotic behavior at large velocity. A variation principle is constructed for the computation of the discrete spectrum. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1966
- Accession Number
- AD0635570
Entities
People
- C. H. Su
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology