Introduction to Plasma Physics I
Plasma, the fourth state of matter that dominates the visible universe, is the subject of this MIT OpenCourseWare course. It covers Coulomb collisions and transport processes, motion of charged particles in magnetic fields, plasma confinement schemes, and MHD equilibrium and stability analysis. Later sessions move into two-fluid hydrodynamic models, wave propagation in magnetized plasmas, kinetic theory and the Vlasov model, electron plasma waves and Landau damping, ion-acoustic waves, and streaming instabilities. The material builds toward applications in controlled thermonuclear fusion and astrophysics. Materials include lecture notes and problem sets from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering and Physics departments. A solid undergraduate grounding in electromagnetic theory, Maxwell's equations, partial differential equations, and complex analysis is assumed. Free to audit through MIT OpenCourseWare, with no certificate offered.