On the Interaction of Charged Particles with Plasma

The last several years have seen great activity in the study of the properties of the "free electron gas" or plasma, An electronic plasma is understood to mean an assembly of electrons which may be regarded as nearly free in their response to a disturbance. The assembly is assumed to be electrically neutral on the whole, due to a stationary positive charge background which will be assumed uniform in density. These electrons interact with each other via the longrange coulomb potential. Due to the nature of this interaction, the system exhibits a very interesting collective behavior which evinces itself in the existence of plasma oscillations,