The framework of plasma physics

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"Plasma physics is a necessary part of our understanding of stellar and galactic structure. It determines the magnetospheric environment of the earth and other planets; it forms the research frontier in such areas as nuclear fusion, advanced accelerators, and high power lasers; and its applications to various industrial processes (such as computer chip manufacture) are rapidly increasing. It is thus a subject with a long list of scientific and technological applications. This book provides the scientific background for understanding such applications, but it emphasizes something else: the intrinsic scientific interest of the plasma state. It attempts to develop an understanding of this state, and of plasma behavior, as thoroughly and systematically as possible. The book was written with the graduate student in mind, but most of the material would also fit into an upper-level undergraduate course."--Provided by publisher. Read more... Abstract: "Plasma physics is a necessary part of our understanding of stellar and galactic structure. It determines the magnetospheric environment of the earth and other planets; it forms the research frontier in such areas as nuclear fusion, advanced accelerators, and high power lasers; and its applications to various industrial processes (such as computer chip manufacture) are rapidly increasing. It is thus a subject with a long list of scientific and technological applications. This book provides the scientific background for understanding such applications, but it emphasizes something else: the intrinsic scientific interest of the plasma state. It attempts to develop an understanding of this state, and of plasma behavior, as thoroughly and systematically as possible. The book was written with the graduate student in mind, but most of the material would also fit into an upper-level undergraduate course."--Provided by publisher Content: Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Editor's Foreword Table of Contents Preface 1: The Nature of Plasma 1.1 Plasma and plasma physics 1.2 Time and distance scales 1.3 Magnetized plasma 2: Charged Particle Motion 2.1 Magnetization 2.2 Motion in constant fields 2.3 Method of averaging 2.4 Guiding center motion 2.5 Invariance of the magnetic moment 2.6 Case of stationary fields 2.7 Guiding center Lagrangian 2.8 Motion in oscillating fields 3: Fluid Description of a Plasma 3.1 Value of fluid description 3.2 Moments of the distribution function 3.3 Fluid conservation laws3.4 Alternative versions 3.5 Magnetized plasma fluid 3.6 Exact fluid closures 4: Waves in a Cold Plasma 4.1 A speedy-wave closure 4.2 Plane waves in a homogeneous plasma 4.3 Wave propagation 4.4 Representation of the dispersion relation 4.5 Waves propagating parallel to Bo 4.6 Waves propagating perpendicular to Bo 4.7 Propagation at arbitrary angle 4.8 Alfvén waves 4.9 Stability in the cold plasma model 5: MHD and the Drift Model 5.1 Magnetized fluid dynamics 5.2 MHD 5.3 Resistive MHD and magnetic reconnection 5.4 The drift model 5.5 Applications of the drift model5.6 Kinetic MHD 6: Vlasov Description of a Plasma 6.1 Properties of the Vlasov equation 6.2 The wave-particle resonance 6.3 General solution of the Vlasov equation 6.4 The plasma as a dielectric 6.5 Case-Van Kampen modes 6.6 Waves in a magnetized plasma 6.7 Nonlinear solutions 7: Binary Collisions 7.1 Correlations and collisions 7.2 Fokker-Planck scattering 7.3 Balescu-Lenard operator 7.4 Landau-Boltzmann operator 7.5 Calculus of collisions 7.6 Approximations based on mass ratio 7.7 Collisions with neutral particles 8: Collisional Transport 8.1 Physics of diffusion8.2 Local transport theory 8.3 Kinetic description of a magnetized plasma 8.4 The Spitzer problem 8.5 Variational transport theory 8.6 Perpendicular transport 9: Turbulent Transport 9.1 Turbulence and the closure problem 9.2 Passive evolution 9.3 The random gyrator 9.4 Transport in a known spectrum 9.5 Quasilinear theory 10: Description of a Relativistic Plasma 10.1 Relativistic plasma 10.2 Relativistic kinematics 10.3 Relativistic electrodynamics 10.4 Kinetic theory 10.5 Moments of kinetic equation 10.6 Maxwellian distribution 10.7 Magnetized plasma A: Derivation of Balescu-Lenard operatorA.1 Preliminaries A.2 Diffusion tensor A.3 Dynamical friction A.4 Conclusion Bibliography Index