Collisional losses of electrons from an adiabatic trap in a plasma with a positive potential

The author obtains analytical expressions for the collisional losses of electrons and their energy from an adiabatic trap when the plasma has a high positive potential. The expressions are derived on the basis of an approximate solution of the Fokker-Planck equation, which yields more reliable results than those obtained with the estimative formulas used in a number of other works. In addition, an expression is obtained for the mean energy of the electrons escaping from the trap.