Transport Chaos And Plasma Physics

This workshop gathered experts in plasma physics, nonlinear phenomena and mathematics. It aimed at enabling theoreticians and experimentalists in plasma turbulence to relate electromagnetic fluctuations to transport processes. It may lead to the development of new diagnostics and new methods for signal processing.

Since the early developments of 'nonlinear science', plasma physics played a major role in its evolution: solitons, hamiltonian chaos, distinction between absolute and convective instabilities, and dynamics of coherent structures in turbulence. Understanding transport in plasmas is important for fusion devices but also for fundamental astrophysics, for fluid mechanics, for theoretical chemistry and engineering, and plasma processing in engineering.This second workshop gathered experts in plasma physics, nonlinear phenomena and mathematics. It aimed at enabling theoreticians, numericians and experimentalists in plasma turbulence to relate electromagnetic fluctuations, modes of self-organisation and transport processes. It may lead to developing new diagnostics and new methods for signal processing.

Market: Students and researchers in chaos, plasma physics, and fluid transport. This superb collection of invited papers offers an excellent overview of the current status and future trends in chaotic dynamics, plasma and fluid physics, nonlinear phenomena and chaos, and transport and turbulence studies.

Anomalous transport is a ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical, geophysical and laboratory plasmas; and is a key topic in controlled nuclear fusion research. Despite its fundamental importance and ongoing research interest, a full understanding of anomalous transport in plasmas is still incomplete, due to the complexity of the nonlinear phenomena involved. Aspects in Anomalous Transport in Plasmas is the first book to systematically consider anomalous plasma transport theory and provides a unification of the many theoretical models by emphasizing interrelations between seemingly different methodologies. It is not intended as a catalogue of the vast number of plasma instabilities leading to anomalous transport; instead it chooses a number of these and emphasizes the aspects specifically due to turbulence. After a brief introduction, the microscopic theory of turbulence is discussed, including quasilinear theory and various aspects of renormalization methods, which leads to an understanding of resonance broadening, mode coupling, trajectory correlation and clumps. The second half of the book is devoted to stochiastic tramsport, using methods based on the Langevin equations and on Random Walk theory. This treatment aims at going beyond the traditional limits of weak turbulence, by introducing the recently developed method of decorrelation trajectories, and its application to electrostatic turbulence, magnetic turbulence and zonal flow generation. The final chapter includes very recent work on the nonlocal transport phenomenon.

For a few seconds with large machines, scientists and engineers have now created the fusion power of the stars in the laboratory and at the same time find the rich range of complex turbulent electromagnetic waves that transport the plasma confinement systems. The turbulent transport mechanisms created in the laboratory are explained in detail in the second edition of 'Turbulent Transport in Magnetized Plasmas' by Professor Horton.The principles and properties of the major plasma confinement machines are explored with basic physics to the extent currently understood. For the observational laws that are not understood — the empirical confinement laws — offering challenges to the next generation of plasma students and researchers — are explained in detail. An example, is the confinement regime — called the 'I-mode' — currently a hot topic — is explored.Numerous important problems and puzzles for the next generation of plasma scientists are explained. There is growing demand for new simulation codes utilizing the massively parallel computers with MPI and GPU methods. When the 20 billion dollar ITER machine is tested in the 2020ies, new theories and faster/smarter computer simulations running in near real-time control systems will be used to control the burning hydrogen plasmas.

The book introduces readers to and summarizes the current ideas and theories about the basic mechanisms for transport in chaotic flows. Typically no single paradigmatic approach exists as this topic is relevant for fields as diverse as plasma physics, geophysical flows and various branches of engineering. Accordingly, the dispersion of matter in chaotic or turbulent flows is analyzed from different perspectives. Partly based on lecture courses given by the author, this book addresses both graduate students and researchers in search of a high-level but approachable and broad introduction to the topic.

Existing textbooks on plasma physics usually contain only a minor contribution devoted to plasma transport. The aim of Transport Processes in Plasmas'' is to provide a comprehensive and unified presentation of the transport theory in plasmas. This subject is of great importance in general statistical and plasma physics; moreover, it constitutes a keystone in the thermonuclear fusion programme as well as in astro- and geophysics. The subject is presented here by unified concepts, methods and notations. The contents are strongly embedded in a general framework of theoretical physics, appealing to modern Hamiltonian mechanics, kinetic theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, etc. The necessary concepts from these disciplines are briefly but completely explained, making the two volumes a self-contained text. Plasma transport theory can be characterised as a truly interdisciplinary activity, and several chapters are included containing the important concepts of these peripheral fields, briefly and completely. Many new features are introduced in those two volumes.

Transport phenomena in plasmas are the relatively slow processes of particle momentum and energy transport systems in a state of mechanical equilibrium. In contrast to neutral gases, these phenomena in plasmas are greatly influenced by self-consistent fields, in particular electric fields. These can produce particle and energy fluxes, in addition to those generated by the inhomogeneity of the plasma composition and temperature. As a result, the physical effects accompanying transport phenomena in plasmas are far more numerous and complicated than those in neutral gases, and the solution of corresponding problems is more difficult. The effects, however, are usually far more interesting and sometimes surprising. This book presents a systematic survey and analysis of the main mechanisms of transport phenomena in plasma and gives examples of gradually increasing complexity to illustrate these mechanisms and the relationships between them. The author pays special attention to the analysis of experimental measurements and considers the relevant processes analytically as well as qualitatively. The majority of problems dealt with in this book are of considerable practical interest, and the phenomena described often determine the main characteristics of processes and devices. Transport Phenomena in Partially Ionized Plasma will be of interest to researchers who need to know the properties of real, specific systems, as well as to engineers and advanced students in the physics of plasmas, semiconductors, various types of gas discharges and the ionosphere.