Landau damping of Langmuir waves in non-Maxwellian plasmas

As free electrons move in the nearest neighbour ion’s potential well, the equilibrium velocity departs from Maxwell distribution. The effect of the non-Maxwellian velocity distribution function (NMVDF) on many properties of the plasma such as the transport coefficients, the kinetic energy, and the degree of ionization is found to be noticeable. A correction to the Langmuir wave dispersion relation is proved to arise due to the NMVDF as well [Phys. Plasmas 17, 052105 (2010)]. The study is extended hereafter to include the effect of NMVDF on the Landau damping of Langmuir wave.