Contents

• Plasma Parameters
  • What is Plasma?
  • Brief History of Plasma Physics
  • Fundamental Parameters
  • Plasma Frequency
  • Debye Shielding
  • Plasma Parameter
  • Collisions
  • Magnetized Plasmas
  • Plasma Beta
  • De Broglie Wavelength
  • Exercises
  
  
• Charged Particle Motion
  • Introduction
  • Motion in Uniform Fields
  • Method of Averaging
  • Guiding Center Motion
  • Magnetic Drifts
  • Invariance of Magnetic Moment
  • Poincaré Invariants
  • Adiabatic Invariants
  • Magnetic Mirrors
  • Van Allen Radiation Belts
  • Equatorial Ring Current
  • Second Adiabatic Invariant
  • Third Adiabatic Invariant
  • Exercises
  
  
• Collisions
  • Introduction
  • Collision Operator
  • Two-Body Elastic Collisions
  • Boltzmann Collision Operator
  • Collisional Conservation Laws
  • Two-Body Coulomb Collisions
  • Rutherford Scattering Cross-Section
  • Landau Collision Operator
  • Rosenbluth Potentials
  • Coulomb Logarithm
  • Boltzmann H-Theorem
  • Collision Operator for Maxwellian Distributions
  • Moments of Collision Operator
  • Collision Times
  • Exercises
  
  
• Plasma Fluid Theory
  • Introduction
  • Moments of Distribution Function
  • Moments of Collision Operator
  • Moments of Kinetic Equation
  • Fluid Equations
  • Entropy Production
  • Fluid Closure
  • Chapman-Enskog Closure
  • Braginskii Equations
  • Unmagnetized Limit
  • Magnetized Limit
  • Normalization of Braginskii Equations
  • Cold-Plasma Equations
  • MHD Equations
  • Drift Equations
  • Closure in Collisionless Magnetized Plasmas
  • Langmuir Sheaths
  • Langmuir Probes
  • Exercises
  
  
• Waves in Cold Plasmas
  • Introduction
  • Plane Waves in Homogeneous Plasmas
  • Cold-Plasma Dielectric Permittivity
  • Cold-Plasma Dispersion Relation
  • Wave Polarization
  • Cutoff and Resonance
  • Waves in Unmagnetized Plasmas
  • Low-Frequency Wave Propagation
  • Parallel Wave Propagation
  • Perpendicular Wave Propagation
  • Exercises
  
  
• Waves in Inhomogeneous Plasmas
  • Introduction
  • WKB Solutions
  • Cutoffs
  • Resonances
  • Resonant Layers
  • Collisional Damping
  • Pulse Propagation
  • Ray Tracing
  • Ionospheric Radio Wave Propagation
  • Exercises
  
  
• Waves in Warm Plasmas
  • Introduction
  • Landau Damping
  • Physics of Landau Damping
  • Plasma Dispersion Function
  • Ion Acoustic Waves
  • Waves in Magnetized Plasmas
  • Parallel Wave Propagation
  • Perpendicular Wave Propagation
  • Electrostatic Waves
  • Velocity-Space Instabilities
  • Counter-Propagating Beam Instability
  • Current-Driven Ion Acoustic Instability
  • Harris Instability
  • Exercises
  
  
• Magnetohydrodynamic Fluids
  • Introduction
  • Magnetic Pressure
  • Flux Freezing
  • MHD Waves
  • Solar Wind
  • Parker Model of Solar Wind
  • Interplanetary Magnetic Field
  • Mass and Angular Momentum Loss
  • MHD Dynamo Theory
  • Homopolar Disk Dynamo
  • Slow and Fast Dynamos
  • Cowling Anti-Dynamo Theorem
  • Ponomarenko Dynamo
  • MHD Shocks
  • Parallel MHD Shocks
  • Perpendicular MHD Shocks
  • Oblique MHD Shocks
  • Exercises
  
  
• Magnetic Reconnection
  • Introduction
  • Reduced-MHD Equations
  • Linearized Reduced-MHD Equations
  • Asymptotic Matching
  • Tearing Modes
  • Resistive Kink Modes
  • Constant-$\psi$ Magnetic Islands
  • Constant-$\psi$ Magnetic Island Evolution
  • Sweet-Parker Reconnection
  • Plasmoid Instability
  • Exercises