NichtMaxwellVerteilungen
NichtMaxwellVe, short for Nicht-Maxwellian Velocity Distribution Function, is a term used in plasma physics and computational fluid dynamics to describe velocity distributions that deviate from the classical Maxwell–Boltzmann shape. While a Maxwellian distribution assumes thermal equilibrium and predicts a specific exponential decay of particle speeds, many real‑world plasmas exhibit non‑thermal tails, anisotropy, or other irregularities due to external fields, wave‑particle interactions, or strong gradients. The NichtMaxwellVe formalism captures these features by allowing the probability density function to be expressed in terms of generalized mathematical forms, such as kappa, Lorentzian, or bi‑Maxwellian distributions.
The concept emerged in the late 1990s when satellite observations of the Earth's magnetosphere revealed persistent