Electron fluid equations and magnetic field generation in laser-irradiated collisional plasmas

The results of a previous paper are used for deriving the electron fluid equations of laser-irradiated collisional plasmas as well as the equations which govern the magnetic field generation in these media. It is shown that these equations involve various collisional contributions which can be exactly calculated at each order for any electron-ion interaction law, and that they enable us to recover, as special cases, the results given in other works. These methods provide a self-consistent theory of transport phenomena in high Z plasmas, in which the background state is generally non-Maxwellian and evolves on a slow time scale determined by the electron heating process. The full calculations are given for the Coulomb law in a particular case, and the results so obtained are compared to those derived from the Krook model. (orig.)