Hall magnetohydrodynamics of partially ionized plasmas

Understand

The Hall effect arises in a plasma when electrons are able to drift with the magnetic field but ions cannot.

• In a fully-ionized plasma this occurs for frequencies between the ion and electron cyclotron frequencies because of the larger ion inertia.
• Typically this frequency range lies well above the frequencies of interest (such as the dynamical frequency of the system under consideration) and can be ignored.
• In a weakly-ionized medium, however, the Hall effect arises through a different mechanism -- neutral collisions preferentially decouple ions from the magnetic field.