impact_parameter_perp

plasmapy.formulary.collisions.impact_parameter_perp(T: Unit("K"), species: (<class 'plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle'>, <class 'plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle'>), V: Unit("m / s") = <Quantity nan m / s>) -> Unit("m")

Distance of closest approach for a 90° Coulomb collision.

Parameters
• T (Quantity) – Temperature in units of temperature or energy per particle, which is assumed to be equal for both the test particle and the target particle

• species (tuple) – A tuple containing string representations of the test particle (listed first) and the target particle (listed second)

• V (Quantity, optional) – The relative velocity between particles. If not provided, thermal velocity is assumed: $$μ V^2 \sim 2 k_B T$$ where $$μ$$ is the reduced mass.

Returns

impact_parameter_perp – The distance of closest approach for a 90° Coulomb collision.

Return type
Raises
• ValueError – If the mass or charge of either particle cannot be found, or any of the inputs contain incorrect values.

• UnitConversionError – If the units on any of the inputs are incorrect.

• TypeError – If either of T or V is not a Quantity.

• RelativityError – If the input velocity is same or greater than the speed of light.

Warns

Notes

The distance of closest approach, impact_parameter_perp, is given by (see Ch. 5 of Chen [2016]):

$b_⟂ = \frac{Z_1 Z_2}{4 π \epsilon_0 m v^2}$

Examples

>>> import astropy.units as u
>>> T = 1e6*u.K
>>> species = ('e', 'p')
>>> impact_parameter_perp(T, species)
<Quantity 8.3550...e-12 m>