Plasma turbulent reactors

Similarity solutions are found for the evolution of the distribution functions of the radiation and relativistic electrons in a plasma turbulent reactor (PTR). These solutions have a “universal” power-law form which is shown to be analogous to the Kolmogorov spectrum for fluid turbulence and stable in the same sense. These results appear to have a minimal model dependence and may have considerable implications for our understanding of nonthermal radiation sources in astrophysics which have power-law spectra. The PTR theory gives two values for the resultant radiation spectrum if the PTR's relativistic electrons are placed in an optically thin environment, namely a spectral falloff of ω^−0.5 and ω⁻¹ in remarkably close agreement with the observed values.