The Nonlinear Debye-Onsager Relaxation Effect in Weakly Ionized Plasmas

A weakly ionized plasma under the influence of a strong electric field is considered. Supposing a local Maxwellian distribution for the electron momenta the plasma is described by hydrodynamic equations for the pair distribution functions. These equations are solved and the relaxation field is calculated for an arbitrary field strength. It is found that the relaxation effect becomes lower with increasing strength of the electrical field.