Abstract

Plasma Waves discusses the basic development and equations for the many aspects of plasma waves. The book is organized into two major parts, examining both linear and nonlinear plasma waves in the eight chapters it encompasses.
After briefly discussing the properties and applications of plasma wave, the book goes on examining the wave types in a cold, magnetized plasma and the general forms of the dispersion relation that characterize the waves and label the various types of solutions. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the acoustic phenomena through the fluid model of plasma and the kinetic effects. These chapters also describe the averaging process for the fluid element motion using expanded Boltzmann equation for each species in a velocity moment expansion, truncating the expansion at some suitable level, depending on the particular problem. The remaining four chapters discuss the effects of adding sharp boundaries, slowly varying inhomogeneities, nonlinearities at several levels, and turbulent plasmas. Supplementary texts on complex variables and the special functions in plasma physics are provided in the concluding section of this text.
The book is an advanced text for graduate students who have had an introductory plasma course at some level.