Influence of Electronic Excitation on the Thermodynamic Properties of Hydrogen Plasmas

摘要

The results presented unambiguously show that electronic excitation plays a nonmarginal role in affecting the thermodynamic properties of high-temperature atomic hydrogen plasmas. In particular, they confirm and extend the compensation effects found in the past on the specific heats of nitrogen and helium plasmas, indicating, however, that this kind of compensation fails for pressure higher than 10~5 Pa. The present results, together with the corresponding results on transport coefficients, provide new perspectives in the study of high-temperature-high-pressure LTE plasmas. Future exploration in this direction should make use of more refined cutoff criteria, valid for all pressure and temperature ranges. Corresponding results can quantitatively change the present observations without changing the qualitative nature of the present results of electronically excited states for LTE plasmas. Higher differences can be expected for non-LTE plasmas with overpopulation.