Kinetic theory of relativistic plasmas

The thermalization of particle kinetic motion by binary collisions is considered for a plasma with kTapprox.(10--100) mc2, where m is the electron mass. At this temperature, the principal mechanism for relaxation of electron motion is via radiationless electron-electron collisions (Moller scattering). Ions are nonrelativistic, but are energetic enough so that their Coulomb scattering can be treated in the Born approximation. Relaxation times are computed and Boltzmann-equation Fokker--Planck operators are derived for the various binary-collision processes. The expression for the rate of kinetic energy exchange between electron and ion gases is derived for the case where the gases are at different temperatures