Abstract
McComas et al. (2025) introduced a numerical experiment, where ordinary uncorrelated collisions between collision pairs are followed by other, controlled (correlated) collisions, shedding light on the emergence of kappa distributions through particle correlations in space plasmas. We extend this experiment by introducing correlations indicating that (i) when long-range correlations are interwoven with collision pairs, the resulting thermodynamic kappa are described as that corresponding to an 'interatomic' potential interaction among particles; (ii) searching for a closer description of heliospheric plasmas, we found that pairwise short-range correlations are sufficient to lead to appropriate values of thermodynamic kappa, especially when forming correlated clusters; (iii) multi-particle correlations do not lead to physical stationary states; finally, (iv) an optimal model arises when combining all previous findings. In an excellent match with space plasmas observations, the thermodynamic kappa that describes the stationary state at which the system is stabilized behaves as follows: (a) When correlations are turned off, kappa is turning toward infinity, indicating the state of classical thermal equilibrium (Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution), (b) When collisions are turned off, kappa is turning toward the anti-equilibrium state, the furthest state from the classical thermal equilibrium (-5 power-law phase-space distribution), and (c) the finite kappa values are generally determined by the competing factor of collisions and correlations.