On the Shukla-Nambu-Salimullah potential in magnetized plasmas

In magnetized plasmas, there are two electrostatic potentials, i.e., the almost spherical Debye-Mickel and the strongly anisotropic Shukla-Nambu-Salimullah potentials. The physics of the latter potential due to ion polarization drift is clarified. The exact solution for the Shukla-Nambu-Salimullah potential introduces a new shielding length across the external magnetic field which is much larger than that of the Debye-Mickel potential. There is no exponential decay of the potential for v(t) = C-s, where vt is the test particle velocity and C-s is the ion sound velocity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.