Reviews of plasma physics.

Reviews of Plasma Physics, Volume 23, presents two high quality reviews from the cutting-edge of Russian plasma physics research.

"Plasma Models of Atom and Radiative-Collisional Processes", by V.A. Astapenko, L.A. Bureyeva, V.S. Lisitsa, is devoted to a unified description of the atomic core polarization effects in the free-free, free-bound and bound-bound transitions of the charged particles in the field of multielectron atom. These effects were treated independently in various applications for more than 40 years. The universal description is based on statistical plasma models of atomic processes with complex ions and atoms. This description makes it possible to extract general scaling laws for the processes above. This review is the first attempt to give the universal approach to the problem. All types of transitions are considered in the frame of both classical and quantum models for the energy scattering of the particle interacting with the atomic core. Experimental and theoretical results are given for the oscillator strengths of atoms and highly charged ions, polarization phenomena in photoeffect, new polarization channel in recombination and for Bremsstrahlung of electrons, relativistic and heavy particles on complex atoms and ions.

"Asymptotic Theory of Charge Exchange And Mobility Processes for Atomic Ions" by B.M. Smirnov reviews the process of resonant charge exchange, and also the transport processes (mobility and diffusion coefficients) for ions in parent gases which are determined by resonant electron transfer. The basis is the asymptotic theory of resonant charge exchange that allows us to evaluate cross sections for all the elements and estimate their accuracy. A simple version of the asymptotic theory is used as follows: a parameter is the ratio between an atom cross section, and the cross section of resonant charge exchange. The cross section of this process is expressed through asymptotic parameters of a transferring electron it the atom. Experimental results are also used, but their accuracy is usually lower than can be obtained by the asymptotic theory.