Influence of electronic excitation on the thermodynamic properties of hydrogen plasmas

The influence of electronic excitation on the thermodynamic properties of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) plasmas was analyzed. The internal excitation effects two contributions (frozen and reactive) of the total specific heat in opposite directions. The insertion of electronically excited states in the whole thermodynamic scheme increases the frozen specific heat compared with the corresponding quantity calculated by neglecting the electronically excited states. Electronic excitation is important in determining the emissivity properties of atomic plasmas as it was observed the role of electronically excited states with their abnormal cross sections in decreasing the transport of LTE plasmas as compared with the same quantities calculated by treating each electronically excited state with same transport of the ground state. The thermodynamic properties of atomic hydrogen plasmas are calculated by summing the contributions to the relevant quantities of the different components.