This dissertation addresses the delicate problem of aging in complex systems characterized by non-Poissonian statistics. With reference to a generic two-states system interacting with a bath it is shown that to properly describe the evolution of such a system within the formalism of the continuous time random walk (CTRW), it has to be taken into account that, if the system is prepared at time t=0 and the observation of the system starts at a later time ta>0, the distribution of the first sojourn times in each of the two states depends on ta, the age of the system. It is shown that this aging property in the fractional derivative formalism forces to introduce a fractional index depending on time. It is shown also that, when a stationary condition exists, the Onsager regression principle is fulfilled only if the system is aged and consequently if an infinitely aged distribution for the first sojourn times is adopted in the CTRW formalism used to describe the system itself. This dissertation, as final result, shows how to extend to the non-Poisson case the Kubo Anderson (KA) lineshape theory, so as to turn it into a theoretical tool adequate to describe the time evolution of …

Collision strength, the measure of strength for a binary collision, hasn't been defined clearly. In practice, many physical arguments have been employed for the purpose and taken for granted. A scattering angle has been widely and intensively used as a measure of collision strength in plasma physics for years. The result of this is complication and unnecessary approximation in deriving some of the basic kinetic equations and in calculating some of the basic physical terms. The Boltzmann equation has a five-fold integral collision term that is complicated. Chandrasekhar and Spitzer's approaches to the linear Fokker-Planck coefficients have several approximations. An effective variable-change technique has been developed in this dissertation as an alternative to scattering angle as the measure of collision strength. By introducing the square of the reduced impulse or its equivalencies as a collision strength variable, many plasma calculations have been simplified. The five-fold linear Boltzmann collision integral and linearized Boltzmann collision integral are simplified to three-fold integrals. The arbitrary order linear Fokker-Planck coefficients are calculated and expressed in a uniform expression. The new theory provides a simple and exact method for describing the equilibrium plasma collision rate, and a precise calculation of the equilibrium relaxation time. It generalizes …