Question: What kind of energy does a plasma weapon produce?

When discussing weapons in science fiction, a plasma weapon is a type of raygun that fires a stream, bolt(s), pulse or toroid of plasma (i.e. very hot, very energetic excited matter).  The primary damage mechanism of these fictional weapons is usually thermal transfer; it typically causes serious burns, and often immediate death of living creatures, and melts or evaporates other materials.  In certain fiction, plasma weapons may also have a significant kinetic energy component, that is to say the ionized material is projected with sufficient momentum to cause some secondary impact damage in addition to causing high thermal damage.  In some fictions, like Star Wars, plasma is highly effective against mechanical targets such as droids.  The ionized gas disrupts their systems. <SEP> A slapper detonator, also called exploding foil initiator (EFI), is a relatively recent kind of a detonator developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US Patent No. 4,788,913.  It is an improvement of the earlier exploding-bridgewire detonator; instead of directly coupling the shock wave from the exploding wire, the expanding plasma from an explosion of a metal foil drives another thin plastic or metal foil called a "flyer" or a "slapper" across a gap, and its high-velocity impact on the explosive (for example, PETN or hexanitrostilbene) then delivers the energy and shock needed to initiate a detonation.  Normally all the slapper's kinetic energy is supplied only by the heating (and hence expansion) of the plasma (the former foil) by the current passing through it, though constructions with a "back strap" to further drive the plasma forward by magnetic field exist too.  This assembly is quite efficient; up to 30% of the electrical energy can be converted to the slapper's kinetic energy. <SEP> Plasma (from Ancient Greek πλάσμα , meaning "moldable substance" or "jelly") can simply be considered as a gaseous mixture of negatively charged electrons and highly charged positive ions, however, true plasma production is from the distinct separation of these ions and electrons that produces an electric field, which in turn, produces electric currents and magnetic fields. Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter and was first introduced by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s.  Plasma can be generated by heating neutral gases or by subjecting gas to a strong electromagnetic field.  Unlike, the other three states of solid, liquid, and gas, plasma does not freely exist on the Earth. <SEP> Vacuolar-type H+ -ATPase (V-ATPase) is a highly conserved evolutionarily ancient enzyme with remarkably diverse functions in eukaryotic organisms.  V-ATPases acidify a wide array of intracellular organelles and pump protons across the plasma membranes of numerous cell types.  V-ATPases couple the energy of ATP hydrolysis to proton transport across intracellular and plasma membranes of eukaryotic cells.  It is generally seen as the polar opposite of ATP synthase because ATP synthase is a proton channel that uses the energy from a proton gradient to produce ATP.  V-ATPase however, is a proton pump that uses the energy from ATP hydrolysis to produce a proton gradient.