Nonideality effects on temperature relaxation

The relaxation of two-temperature electron-ion systems is investigated. We apply a quantum kinetic approach which is suitable to treat strong electron-ion coupling and avoids any ad hoc cut-off procedures. A comparison with the usual Landau-Spitzer formula gives good agreement for Coulomb logarithms larger than three, whereas larger relaxation rates were found for strongly coupled plasmas. It is shown that the Landau-Spitzer theory can be greatly improved considering hyperbolic orbits. Numerical results for the energy transfer rates and the temporal behavior of the electron temperature are shown.