ABSTRACT
Plasma has a number of characteristic parameters with dimensions time and length. When classifying plasma conditions it is a great advantage to use these as basic units. A characteristic time scale can be obtained as the inverse of the electron plasma frequency. Evidently, the authors can associate different plasma frequencies with different species, ions and electrons in particular, by introducing the respective densities, charges and masses. From dimensional considerations it can be demonstrated that a quantity having dimension length can be constructed from density, temperature, Boltzmann’s constant, electric charge and the vacuum permeability. The Debye length can be interpreted as the distance traveled by a plasma particle within one appropriate plasma period, where admittedly the authors have been somewhat sloppy with a numerical coefficient in defining the thermal velocity.
