A drift-ordered short mean-free path description of a partially ionized magnetized plasma

Neutral particles that are present at the edge of plasma magnetic confinement devices can play an important role in energy and momentum transport, and their effects should be accounted for. This work uses the drift ordering to derive a closed fluid description for a collisional, magnetized, partially ionized plasma. Charge-exchange, ionization and recombination processes are taken into account. It is assumed that electron distribution function is unaffected by atomic processes, so that electron-ion momentum and energy exchange are described by the usual expressions for a fully ionized plasma, and that neutral-neutral collisions are unimportant. The collisional fluid equations derived herein generalize the drift-ordered description of a fully ionized collisional plasma (Catto P J et al 2004 Phys. Plasmas 11 90), agree with the MHD-ordered description of a partially ionized plasma (Helander P et al 1994 Phys. Plasmas 1 3174) in the large-flow limit and can be used to describe both turbulent and collisional behavior of a partially ionized plasma.