On the initial-value problem in a cold plasma model (Q480380)

A homogeneous, weakly ionized gas that fills the whole space is considered. A plane electromagnetic (EM) wave is induced at positive times by some EM event at negative time and by an assigned external current. If one considers the collisions between molecules and electrons of the gas by a suitable linear inheritance relation (based on fading memory), the propagation will be described by an integro-differential equation. The explicit fundamental solution is determined for the linear problem by the methods of Fourier and Laplace transformations, and the classical initial value problem is solved for arbitrary initial data. Regarding the physical hypotheses, the oscillations of the EM fields must have approximately zero means, the ions must have negligible motion compared to that of the electrons, the velocities must be nonrelativistic, the electron and ion density must be smaller than that of the neutral particles, the average kinetic energy of the electrons is not sufficient to cause excited states of the neutral particles.