The role of electronically excited states on transport properties of air plasmas

Transport coeffcients of an LTE air plasma are derived in the framework of the Chapman- Enskog theory, including the effect of low-lying excited states of oxygen and nitrogen atoms and ions. Elastic collision integrals for interaction involving excited species are calculated referring to a phenomenological approach, successfully applied to ground-state components of planetary atmospheres. The inelastic contribution, affecting odd-order collision integrals, is estimated from relevant resonant charge and excitation exchange processes for atom-parent-ion and atom-atom collisions respectively. Copyright © 2008 by Laricchiuta.