Nonideal ionization in plasmas with higher charges

The effect of multiple ionization in dense plasmas is studied. By including the Coulomb interactions into the chemical potentials generalized Saha equations are derived. The existence of the following feedback loop is verified: (i) multiply charged ions strongly enhance the non-ideality; (ii) non-ideality enhances multiple ionization. Based on the pair distribution function at small distances simple expressions for the ionization recombination coefficients are derived. (author)