Fundamentals of Charged Particle Transport in Gases and Condensed Matter Monograph Series in Physical Sciences Series

This book offers a comprehensive and cohesive overview of transport processes associated with all kinds of charged particles, including electrons, ions, positrons, and muons, in both gases and condensed matter. The emphasis is on fundamental physics, linking experiment, theory and applications. In particular, the authors discuss:

• The kinetic theory of gases, from the traditional Boltzmann equation to modern generalizations





• A complementary approach: Maxwell?s equations of change and fluid modeling





• Calculation of ion-atom scattering cross sections





• Extension to soft condensed matter, amorphous materials





• Applications: drift tube experiments, including the Franck-Hertz experiment, modeling plasma processing devices, muon catalysed fusion, positron emission tomography, gaseous radiation detectors

Straightforward, physically-based arguments are used wherever possible to complement mathematical rigor.

Robert Robson has held professorial positions in Japan, the USA and Australia, and was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at several universities in Germany. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Ronald White is Professor of Physics and Head of Physical Sciences at James Cook University, Australia.

Malte Hildebrandt is Head of the Detector Group in the Laboratory of Particle Physics at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland.

Monograph Series in Physical Sciences

Preface

About the Authors

Glossary of Symbols and Acronyms

1 Introduction

I Kinetic Theory Foundations

2 Basic Theoretical Concepts: Phase and Configuration Space

3 Boltzmann Collision Integral, H-Theorem, and Fokker–Planck Equation

4 Interaction Potentials and Cross Sections

5 Kinetic Equations for Dilute Particles in Gases

6 Charged Particles in Condensed Matter

II Fluid Modelling in Configuration Space

7 Fluid Modelling: Foundations and First Applications

8 Fluid Models with Inelastic Collisions

9 Fluid Modelling with Loss and Creation Processes

10 Fluid Modelling in Condensed Matter

III Solutions of Kinetic Equations

11 Strategies and Regimes for Solution of Kinetic Equations

12 Numerical Techniques for Solution of Boltzmann’s Equation

13 Boundary Conditions, Diffusion Cooling, and a Variational Method

14 An Analytically Solvable Model

IV Special Topics

15 Temporal Non-Locality

16 The Franck–Hertz Experiment

17 Positron Transport in Soft-Condensed Matter with Application to PET

18 Transport in Electric and Magnetic Fields and Particle Detectors

19 Muons in Gases and Condensed Matter

20 Concluding Remarks

V Exercises and Appendices 331

Exercises

Appendix A Comparison of Kinetic Theory and Quantum Mechanics

Appendix B Inelastic and Ionization Collision Operators for Light Particles

Appendix C The Dual Eigenvalue Problem

Appendix D Derivation of the Exact Expression for np(k)

Appendix E Physical Constants and Useful Formulas

References

Index

Robert Robson, FAPS, FRMetS, completed a PhD in theoretical physics at the Australian National University in 1972. He has lectured and researched in physics and specializes in electron and positron transport in gases and soft condensed matter. He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany and held the Hitachi Chair of Electrical Engineering at Keio University, Japan.

Ronald White obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from James Cook University in 1997, and is now Associate Professor and Director of the JCU node of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Antimatter-Matter Studies. He specializes in kinetic theory and fluid modelling of charged particles in gases and soft matter.

Malte Hildebrandt completed his PhD in experimental physics at the University of Heidelberg in 1999, where he worked on the development of particle detectors for high energy particle physics. After a postdoc at the University of Zürich, he joined the Paul Scherrer Institut, and has been head of the detector group in the Laboratory of Particle Physics since 2009.