Collisionless Plasmas in Astrophysics examines the unique properties of media without collisions in plasma physics. Experts in this field, the authors present the first book to concentrate on collisionless conditions in plasmas, whether close or not to thermal equilibrium. Filling a void in scientific literature, Collisionless Plasmas in Astrophysics explains the possibilities of modeling such plasmas, using a fluid or a kinetic framework. It also addresses common misconceptions that even professionals may possess, on phenomena such as "collisionless (Landau) damping". Abundant illustrations are given in both space physics and astrophysics.

Autorentext

Gerard Belmont works as a "Directeur de Recherches" at the French CNRS for twenty years. He is a specialist of collisionless media, and their description through kinetic and fluid theories.

Roland Grappin is Astronomer at the Paris Observatory since 1979. His scientific activity covers turbulence in fluids and plasmas, dynamics of the solar wind, corona and transition region.

Fabrice Mottez is a scientist at the Paris Observatory. He has devoted his career to collisionless space plasmas, the terrestrial and Jovian magnetospheres, fundamental plasma physics, and numerical simulation.

Filippo Pantellini is a scientist at the Paris Observatory. His main research fields cover the theoretical and numerical investigation of collisionless and weakly collisional space plasmas, with a particular interest for the solar wind and the solar corona.

Guy Pelletier is a professor at the University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble. He founded the theoretical group of the Laboratory for Astrophysics. He accessed to all the levels of professorship and got the status of Emeritus Professor in 2009

Klappentext

This book focus on plasma physics with a specific emphasis on the peculiarities of the collisionless properties of those media. Collisionless here means free of ion-collisions. Such an approach does not exist in the present literature although the collisionless condition is ubiquitous in space- and astrophysics as well in some laboratory devices devoted to magnetic fusion, like ITER. Furthermore, it leads to specific problems that are often misunderstood by physicists of other domains. It is not possible to use ordinary thermodynamics or any statistical physics based on a small departure from thermal equilibrium.

Furthermore, the theory illustrated with concrete applications mainly taken in space physics (solar corona, solar wind, magnetospheres, and auroral phenomena) and in astrophysics (relativistic shocks, cosmic ray acceleration) will be presented. In the book some indications on the numerical simulation of the collisionless plasmas is presented, whereas other classical textbooks were written before the present development of these techniques.

From the contents:
• Introduction
• Plasma descriptions and plasma models
• The magnetized plasmas
• Collisional-collisionless
• Waves in plasmas
• Non linear effects, shocks and turbulence
• Flow and particle acceleration processes
• Transport and acceleration of cosmic rays
• The kinetic-fl uid duality

Inhalt
Plasma descriptions and plasma models
The magnetized plasmas
Collisional-collisionless
Waves in plasmas
Non linear effects, shocks and turbulence
Flow and particle acceleration processes
Transport and acceleration of cosmic rays
The kinetic-fluid duality