Investigation of the fundamental properties of a Coulombian plasma by the method of many-particle dynamics

It is shown that a completely ionized, classical, Coulombian plasma, placed in an adiabatic enclosure, possesses a stationary state. At the same time, a plasma placed in a thermostat recombines through triple collisions, with a velocity satisfactorily accounted for by well-known theoretical results. The results obtained by numerical modeling have shown that, for a plasma placed in an adiabatic enclosure, the ergodic assumption is not valid. Various possible kinetic mechanisms, ensuring the existence of a stationary state of the adiabatically enclosed plasma, are considered.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 11, pp. 3–34, November, 1991.