Limiting nonideal metastable supercooled plasma

Direct modeling of the dynamics of a system of many Coulomb particles is applied to analyze the formation stage of a metastable plasma state from an initial, highly nonideal state, and also to consider some properties of this metastable supercooled state. It is shown that relaxation of the average particle kinetic energy may be characterized by a universal dimensionless function and in particular, there is a limiting degree of plasma nonideality which may be achieved in the metastable state, in the absence of any external influence. The calculated pair correlation functions agree with the results of the Debye model, even outside its limits of validity. The time dependence of the total dipole moment of the particle system is investigated. It is shown that oscillations of the total dipole moment are observed. These collective oscillations take place at a frequency slightly below the Langmuir frequency and the oscillations of free and bound electrons are in antiphase. The hypothesis is put forward that recombination relaxation is frozen as a result of interaction between quasibound electrons and Langmuir oscillations of free electrons. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 67, 42–52 (August 1997)