Question

What is the effective electron mass in a plasma?

Answer 1

Is there a way to calculate the effective electron mass in plasmas?  Effective electron mass is usually defined as varying from the vacuum electron mass in solid state physics. However, momentum exchange between electrons and its surroundings, upon which the solid state effective mass of electrons differs from vacuum electron mass, would seem plausible for other conductive media such as plasmas.  For instance, the Wikipedia article on plasma oscillation gives this equation for plasma frequency in terms of effective mass:  enter image description here  Another cite is "Exotic plasma as classical Hall Liquid" which concludes:

Answer 2

The only thing I can think of is that this may be due to some attempt to make the plasma frequency relativistic, but that is a stretch at best... [I did not read the article, I only know that I never use an "effective" mass when calculating a plasma frequency.] –
Effective electron mass is usually defined as varying from the vacuum electron mass in solid state physics. However, momentum exchange between electrons and its surroundings, upon which the solid state effective mass of electrons differs from vacuum electron mass, would seem plausible for other conductive media such as plasmas.