ABSTRACT

The radiation emitted by a charged particle during the collision with another particle is customarily called bremsstrahlung (in German ‘braking radiation’) because it was first detected when high-energy electrons were stopped in a thick metallic target. Inverse bremsstrahlung is the process in which an electron absorbs a photon while colliding with an ion or with another electron. A rigorous calculation of the inverse bremsstrahlung absorption can be made by using the kinetic theory (e.g. theVlasov equation) to take into account the distribution function of the electrons and the positions of the ions (Dawson 1968). In this case the absorption coefficient depends on the correlation function of the ions.