High-Temperature Quantum Regime and Emergent Short-Range Screening in Nondegenerate Plasmas

Abstract In nondegenerate, weakly coupled, fully ionized plasmas, microscopic quantum effects are often neglected in standard kinetic treatments. Here, we identify a high-temperature regime, elucidated and characterized by a hierarchy of length scales, in which short-range quantum screening and diffraction arise from the nonlocal electron response to the bare Coulomb field of a test charge. This quantum response yields a temperature- and density-dependent short-range screened potential, and we examine its consequences under conditions attained in magnetically confined fusion plasmas.