Electron-beam-generated plasma channel at low pressures

The evolution of an electron-beam-generated plasma channel is sensitive to the pressure of the background gas. An adequate understanding of low density conductivity generation is important to the propagation of intense relativistic electron beams through gases. A multi-group treatement of the electon distribution function is used to model electron dynamics at low pressures, P ≲ 100 Torr. Important inertia, non-Ohmic, and non-local effects are calculated self-consistently from Maxwell´s equations and the plasma currents.