# In a non-degenerate plasma, why are e-e collision negligible compared to e-ion for thermal conduction?

I'm trying to make some order of magnitude estimates of heat transfer in stars - to better understand 1) why conduction is said to be negligible (for non-degenerate matter) and 2) when convection happens and is dominant.

For thermal conduction, I have the expression that the flux of energy over a surface

$f \approx - \rho \langle v \rangle \cdot \lambda \cdot a k_B \frac{dT}{dx}$

For a mean-free path $\lambda$ and degrees of freedom over two '$a$'. I.e. an expression for the thermal conductivity.

Anyway, everything I read (e.g. See section 'Electron Conductivity'), says that the mean free path should be calculated for electron-ion collisions instead of electron-electron collisions. Can anyone explain this?

-
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 3, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "github"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "english_confidence": 0.8636213541030884, "perplexity_flag": "middle"}