This term came up pretty quickly when reading about plasmas, and although it’s somewhat frequent in terms of use, I couldn’t find a clear explanation of what it is, so I figured it’d be useful, both for me and other students who find themselves in this situation.
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"Tenuous" means the density of the plasma is less than 1 particle/cm^3.
In contrast "dense" plasma is on the order of thousands of particles/cm^3.
See p. 38 of NASA-HDBK-4002B https://standards.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/standards/NASA/B/0/2022-06-07-NASA-HDBK-4002B-Approved.pdf
