Charged Particle Transport In Turbulent Astrophysical Plasmas

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.

This book is a valuable introduction to astrophysical plasmas and fluids for graduate students of astronomy preparing either for a research career in the field or just aspiring to achieve a decent degree of familiarity with 99% of the cosmos. The contents provide a true representation of the phenomenal diversity of dominant roles that plasmas and fluids play in the near and far reaches of the universe. The breadth of coverage of basic physical processes is a particularly attractive feature of this textbook. By first using the Liouville equation to derive the kinetic, the two-fluid and single-fluid, descriptions of a plasma and a fluid, and then demonstrating the use of these descriptions for specific situations in the rest of the book, the author has probably chosen the most efficient way of handling this large technical subject. The two major astrophysical issues, fluid or plasma configurations and their radiative signatures, figure prominently throughout the book. The problems are designed to give the reader a feel for the quantitative properties of celestial objects.

The effect of electromagnetic fluctuations, or plasma turbulence, on the motion of the individual particles in a plasma is investigated; two alternative methods are used to find a general equation governing the time-evolution of a distribution of charged particles subject to both an external force field and the random fields of the fluctuations. It is found that, for the high-temperature, low-density plasmas frequently encountered in the study of astrophysics, the presence of even a small amount of turbulence can have a very important effect on the behavior of the plasma. Two problems in which turbulence plays an important role are treated in detail. (Author).

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.

Scientists compare their understanding of common basic plasma, particles, and radiation processes taking place in the solar system and, at larger scales, in other cosmic objects. They especially emphasize processes that govern magnetic activity, particle acceleration, and plasma heating in flares and in planetary magnetic storms through magnetic reconnection or alternative physical processes. New observational results from the SOHO satellite are also presented. The 66 papers are arranged in sections on magnetic reconnection; coronal heating and solar wind acceleration; jets and winds; multi-ion and dusty plasmas; nonlinear dynamics, dynamo, and plasma turbulence; non-thermal radiation; and cosmic ray and particle acceleration. They also include miscellaneous poster papers on such topics as radio activity in young stellar objects, charged particle acceleration in space plasma with two types of scatterers, and the acceleration time of anomalous cosmic rays. The disc contains image and text addenda. The volume and disc are partly reprinted (whatever that means) from Astrophysics and Space Science vol. 264, nos. 1-4 (1998). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

“Transport Processes in Space Physics and Astrophysics” is aimed at graduate level students to provide the necessary mathematical and physics background to understand the transport of gases, charged particle gases, energetic charged particles, turbulence, and radiation in an astrophysical and space physics context. Subjects emphasized in the work include collisional and collisionless processes in gases (neutral or plasma), analogous processes in turbulence fields and radiation fields, and allows for a simplified treatment of the statistical description of the system. A systematic study that addresses the common tools at a graduate level allows students to progress to a point where they can begin their research in a variety of fields within space physics and astrophysics. This book is for graduate students who expect to complete their research in an area of plasma space physics or plasma astrophysics. By providing a broad synthesis in several areas of transport theory and modeling, the work also benefits researchers in related fields by providing an overview that currently does not exist. For numerous interesting and challenging space physics and astrophysics problems, there is a need to describe the “long-term” behavior of systems governed by macroscopic laws and microscopic randomness. A random event has an outcome that is uncertain and unpredictable, yet the collective behavior of a system can be governed by well defined mathematical and physical principles. Examples of physical problems include the behavior of gases in the presence of microscopic inter-particle collisions, the evolution of a gas of charged protons and electrons (a plasma), the collective propagation of solar energetic particles or cosmic rays in a magnetically turbulent medium, the collective behavior of dust in an accretion disk subject to coagulation and destruction, the evolution of low-frequency magnetic field turbulence in the inhomogeneous solar wind, or the transport of photos in a partially ionized interstellar medium. This book provides graduate students with a unified introduction to the physics of collective phenomena or transport processes for gases (charged and uncharged), fields, and photons in a space physics or astrophysics context.

Over the years, many leading European graduate schools in the field of astrophysical and space plasmas have operated within the framework of the research network, "Theory, Observations, and Simulations in Turbulence in Space Plasmas." This text is a set of lectures and tutorial reviews culled from the relevant work of all those schools. It emphasizes applications on solar coronae, solar flares, and the solar wind. In bridging the gap between standard textbook material and state-of-the-art research, this text offers a broad flavor to postgraduate and postdoctoral students just coming to the field. And because of its unique mix, it will also be useful to lecturers looking for advanced teaching material for their seminars and courses.

1. Prof. Masahiro Wakatani and fusion research in his days / K. Itoh. Magnetic relaxation and self-organization in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas. 2. An introduction to mean field dynamo theory / D. W. Hughes and S. M. Tobias. 3. Origin, structure and stability of astrophysical MHD jets / P.-Y. Longaretti -- Turbulence and turbulent transport - the agents of relaxation and structure formation. 4. A tutorial on basic concepts in MHD turbulence and turbulent transport / P. H. Diamond, S.-I. Itoh and K. Itoh. 5. Intermittency like phenomena in plasma turbulence / A. Das, P. Kaw and R. Jha. 6. Nonlinear cascades and spatial structure of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence / W.-C. Müller and R. Grappin. 7. Scale covariance and scale-ratio covariance in turbulent front propagation / A. Pocheau -- Transport bifurcations and relaxation. 8. Transport barrier relaxations in tokamak edge plasmas / P. Beyer. 9. Dynamics of edge localized modes / X. Garbet ... [et al.]. 10. On the onset of collapse events in toroidal plasmas turbulence trigger / K. Itoh ... [et al.].

Most of the visible matter in the universe exists in the plasma state. Plasmas are of major importance for space physics, solar physics, and astrophysics. On Earth they are essential for magnetic controlled thermonuclear fusion. This textbook collects lecture notes from a one-semester course taught at the K.U. Leuven to advanced undergraduate students in applied mathematics and physics. A particular strength of this book is that it provides a low threshold introduction to plasmas with an emphasis on first principles and fundamental concepts and properties. The discussion of plasma models is to a large extent limited to Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with its merits and limitations clearly explained. MHD provides the students on their first encounter with plasmas, with a powerful plasma model that they can link to familiar classic fluid dynamics. The solar wind is studied as an example of hydrodynamics and MHD at work in solar physics and astrophysics.