ON THE POSSIBILITY OF EXCITATION HEATING OF IONS TO HIGH TEMPERATURE

Cyclic or chainlike inelastic collision processes are invoked as an hypothesis to explain the grossly non-thermodynamic properties of energetic carbon and gas-fed carbon arcs confined by magnetic fields. Elastic collisions between the fast electrons (v− > v+ but E− ≪ E+) and the hot ions appear to be only about one-tenth as efficient a process for heating the ions as the proposed multiple inelastic collision process, which we call excitation-heating. In addition, a revised treatment of the rate of energy transfer from hot carbon ions to the very cold electrons (v− < v+) reduces the conventional ion cooling rate by a factor of about 6.