Tests of collision operators using laboratory measurements of shear Alfvén wave dispersion and damping

Measurements of shear Alfven waves are used to test the predictions of a variety of different electron collision operators, including several Krook collision operators as well as a Lorentz collision operator. New expressions for the collisional warm-plasma dielectric tensor resulting from the use of the fully magnetized collisional Boltzmann equation are presented here. Theoretical predictions for the parallel phase velocity and damping as a function of perpendicular wave number k⊥ are derived from the dielectric tensor. Laboratory measurements of the parallel phase velocity and damping of shear Alfven waves were made to test these theoretical predictions in both the kinetic (vte⪢vA) and inertial (vte⪡vA) parameter regimes and at several wave frequencies (ω