Dimensionless parameters (plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless)

Module of dimensionless plasma parameters.

These are especially important for determining what regime a plasma is in. (e.g., turbulent, quantum, collisional, etc.).

For example, plasmas at high (much larger than 1) Reynolds numbers are highly turbulent, while turbulence is negligible at low Reynolds numbers.

Functions

beta(T, n, B)

Compute the ratio of thermal pressure to magnetic pressure.

Mag_Reynolds(U, L, sigma)

Compute the magnetic Reynolds number

quantum_theta(T, n_e)

Compare Fermi energy to thermal kinetic energy to check if quantum effects are important.

Reynolds_number(rho, U, L, mu)

Compute the Reynolds number.

Aliases

PlasmaPy provides short-named (alias) versions of the most common plasma functionality. These aliases are only given to functionality where there is a common lexicon in the community, for example plasma_frequency has the alias wp_. All aliases in PlasmaPy are denoted with a trailing underscore _.

Re_(rho, U, L, mu)

Alias to Reynolds_number().

Rm_(U, L, sigma)

Alias to Mag_Reynolds().