Course Code
P464
Credit
8
Prerequisite
P301 (Electromagnetism II)
Total Hours
42 Lectures + 14 Tutorials
Outcome of the Course
This course teaches the students important concepts and methods in plasma physics and magnetohydrodynamics, with the aim to build their background for future research work in this area.
Approval
Syllabus
- Introduction to plasmas, applications: in fusion, space and astrophysics, semi- conductor etching, micro- wave generation, characterisation of the plasma state, Debye shielding.
- Plasma and cyclotron frequencies, collision rates and mean-free paths, atomic processes, adiabatic invariance, orbit theory, magnetic confinement of single charged particles.
- Two-fluid description, magneto-hydrodynamic waves and instabilities, heat flow, diffusion, kinetic description, and Landau damping.
- Ideal magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium, MHD energy principle, ideal and resistive MHD stability, drift-kinetic equation, collisions, classical and neoclassical transport, drift waves and low frequency instabilities, high frequency micro instabilities, and quasi-linear theory.
Reference Books
- Plasma physics by Peter Andrew Sturrock
- Principles of Magnetohydrodynamics by J. P. Hans Goedbloed, Stefaan Poedts
- Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability by S. Chandrasekhar
- The Physics of Plasmas by T. J. M. Boyd, J. J. Sanderson
- Fundamentals of Plasma Physics by Paul M. Bellan,
- Introduction to Plasma Physics by R. J. Goldston, P. H. Rutherford
- An Introduction to Magnetohydrodynamics by P. A. Davidson
- An Introduction to Plasma Astrophysics and Magnetohydrodynamics by M. Goossens