Regular Article

Simplified calculations of plasma oscillations with non-extensive statistics

Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, University of Puerto Rico, 17 Ave Universidad Ste 1701, San Juan, PR 00925-2537, USA

^a e-mail: verges@ltp.uprrp.edu

Received: 24 April 2020
Received in final form: 20 July 2020
Accepted: 13 August 2020
Published online: 24 September 2020

Abstract

We use the exponential parametrization of the nonextensive distribution to calculate the dielectric constant in an electron gas obeying the nonextensive statistics. As we show, the exponential parametrization allows us to make such calculations in a straightforward way, bypassing the use of intricate formulas obtained from integral tables and/or numerical methods. For illustrative purposes, we apply first the method to the calculation of the permittivity and the corresponding dispersion relation in the ultrarelativistic limit of the electron gas, and verify that it reproduces in a simple way the results that had been obtained previously by other authors using the standard parametrization of the nonextensive distribution. In the same spirit we revisit the calculation of the same quantities for a non-relativistic gas, in the high frequency limit, which has been previously carried out, first by Lima et al., and subsequently revised by Chen and Li. Our own results agree with those obtained by Chen and Li. For completeness, we also apply the method the low frequency limit in the non-relativistic case, which has been previously considered by Dai et al. in the context of the stream plasma instability. We discuss some features of the results obtained in each case and their interpretation of terms of generalized nonextensive quantities, such as the Debye length λ_D^(q), the plasma frequency ω_p^(q) and the ultra-relativistic frequency Ω_e,rel^(q). In the limit q → 1 such quantities reduce to their classical value and the classical result of the dispersion relations are reproduced.