On the contribution of exchange interactions to the Vlasov equation

Journal article, 2015

Exchange effects play an important role in determining the equilibrium properties of dense matter systems, as well as for magnetic phenomena. There exists an extensive literature concerning, e.g., the effects of exchange interactions on the equation of state of dense matter. Here, a generalization of the Vlasov equation to include exchange effects is presented allowing for electromagnetic mean fields, thus incorporating some of the dynamic effects due to the exchange interactions. Treating the exchange term perturbatively, the correction to classical Langmuir waves in plasmas is found, and the results are compared with previous work. It is noted that the relative importance of exchange effects scales similarly with density and temperature as particle dispersive effects, but that the overall magnitude is sensitive to the details of the specific problem. The implications of our results are discussed.