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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2009
Herein is described a calculation of the effective coffision frequency νeff of a low- density, shock-heated argon plasma under the influence of a weak electric field which oscillates harmonically with angular frequency ω. It is shown that, for the high frequency case ω > where is the collision frequency in a Maxwellian gas plasma, one has νeff ⋍ 2, provided that the imaginary part of the argon plasma conductivity is negligibly small in comparison to the real part. The influence of the theoretical model used to calculate νeff on the values of the electron temperature Te derived from measurements is compared with the results obtained in a data reduction for which the hard-sphere model for particle encounters was utilized.