Work Sessions of Plasma Theory

 Introduction

progressively updated in 2019

The Work Sessions of Plasma Theory are a series of meetings intended to help improve our understanding of various aspects of basic or applied plasma physics. A meeting is an opportunity to compare different approaches and formulations, to identify new solutions and to ellaborate references to be used as points of start in future investigations.

An elementary positive effect of such Sessions should be the possible reduction of the confusion which is usually created by the wide diversity of formulations, analytical technics and/or numerical results. It would be helpful to collect a series of methods and technical treatments in a core of basic formulations, to be further used in exploration of more complex situations. At least one would know where to start from.

Many important analytical treatments are now incorporated in numerical codes and this has reduced to a certain extent the interest to keep alive our ability to return, when necessary, to the first analytical description. Why would that be necessary ? It is our opinion that inside the basic approaches, developed in some cases many years ago, it is reflected the physical picture. Without this, a progress will always be difficult.

Briefly characterized, the Work Sessions are a series of comments, evaluations, verifications, confrontation of possible approaches and selection of procedures. There is no intention to substitute textbooks or review articles and the periodic return to the orginal journal papers is highly recommended. In our meetings, repetitions and redundancies are not to be avoided.

The texts that we place here (the links below) are amorph and incomplete. They are a simple list of problems and will be shaped through discussions. We hope that sometime they will be useful.

[NOTE the links in the left column below are to PDF files, please use back-arrow to return here]

 Basic theory

Formulas arising more frequently in applications

Various representations of fields

Equations of motion

Derivation

Solutions of the drift kinetic equation in some applications

Equilibrium flows of toroidal plasma on surfaces

Effect of toroidality inducing variation of plasma parameters on surfaces

Operators of collision and some applications

Plasma viscosity and Transit Time Magnetic Pumping

Few processes involving fast ions

Plasma rotation and effects on transport

The basic instability of toroidally confined plasma

Introductory exploration of the two main instabilities: Ion Temperature Gradient and Trapped Electron Mode

Connection between Density and Vorticity (Ertel's theorem, Charney Hasegawa Mima, etc.)

Few elementary facts related to impurities

Bootstrap current (its existence and its non-existence)

The current of polarization and its role

Neutral Beam Injection, basics

The Stringer effect and its possible role in L to H