%0 Journal Article
%T Evidence of Large-Scale Quantization in Space Plasmas
%A George Livadiotis
%A David J. McComas
%J Entropy
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/e15031118
%X In plasmas, Debye screening structures the possible correlations between particles. We identify a phase space minimum h * in non-equilibrium space plasmas that connects the energy of particles in a Debye sphere to an equivalent wave frequency. In particular, while there is no a priori reason to expect a single value of h * across plasmas, we find a very similar value of h* ¡Ö (7.5 ¡À 2.4)¡Á10 £¿22 J¡¤s using four independent methods: (1) Ulysses solar wind measurements, (2) space plasmas that typically reside in stationary states out of thermal equilibrium and spanning a broad range of physical properties, (3) an entropic limit emerging from statistical mechanics, (4) waiting-time distributions of explosive events in space plasmas. Finding a quasi-constant value for the phase space minimum in a variety of different plasmas, similar to the classical Planck constant but 12 orders of magnitude larger may be revealing a new type of quantization in many plasmas and correlated systems more generally.
%K constants
%K fundamental
%K space plasma
%K thermodynamic properties of plasma
%U http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/3/1118