Molecular dynamics simulations of electron-ion temperature equilibration in an SF6 plasma

We use classical MD to investigate electron-ion temperature equilibration in a two- temperature SF$_{6}$ plasma. We choose a density of 1.0$\times 10^{19}$ (dissociated) SF$_{6}$ molecules per cm$^{3}$ and initial temperatures of $T_{e}\sim 100$ eV and $T_{S}\sim T_{F}\sim 15$ eV in accordance with experiments currently underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Our computed relaxation time is significantly longer than that predicted by the classic theory of Landau and Spitzer. Similar discrepancies are found when comparing to predictions made be more recent theories of electron-ion equilibration. These differences should be large enough to be measured in the upcoming experiments.