Polarization of a plasma in massive astrophysical objects

The macroscopic polarization of a plasma in massive astrophysical objects, which is created by gravitational and other inertial forces acting on a mass, is discussed. An additional polarization source, which appears due to the effect of Coulomb nonideality induced by the strong Coulomb interaction between charged particles, is considered. The solution of the problem can be obtained in the form of a final compact expression for a simplified case of a completely equilibrium (isothermal) star without the relativistic and magnetic-field effects. The variation formulation of statistical mechanics leads to the global equilibrium condition as an extremum of the thermodynamic potential of the star as a whole, as well as to two equivalent local forms of such an equilibrium condition in terms of the constancy of the sum of the potentials including the generalized electrochemical potential and the total balance of forces acting on each charged particle. The hypothetical consequences of the polarization of the plasma in the thermodynamics of massive astrophysical objects including the existence of a macroscopic charge localized at any interface deep in the star are discussed. The possible mechanisms of the suppression of hydrodynamic instability in massive astrophysical objects owing to the almost complete compensation (“screening”) of the effect of the gravitational field acting on each heavy charge particle by the electrostatic polarization field are analyzed.