From Lord Rayleigh to Professor A A Vlasov (from 1906 to 1945)

The authors' view on the development of theoretical concepts of collisionless plasma is presented. The review begins with studies by Lord Rayleigh, who established the basics of multi-electron system theory in 1906 as a development of J J Thompson's atomic theory. His study was based on the concept that electrons move in a self-consistent electric field produced by the electrons themselves. Rayleigh then used this concept to predict the oscillatory motion of electrons and obtained a formula for the frequency of a system's collective oscillations. Those studies established a foundation for Rayleigh's model of a multi-electron system, and his formula for the frequency of collective oscillations may be considered the first analytical result of the science pioneered by Lord Rayleigh.