Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion (3^rd Ed., 3rd ed. 2016)

This complete introduction to plasma physics and controlled fusion by one of the pioneering scientists in this expanding field offers both a simple and intuitive discussion of the basic concepts of this subject and an insight into the challenging problems of current research. In a wholly lucid manner the work covers single-particle motions, fluid equations for plasmas, wave motions, diffusion and resistivity, Landau damping, plasma instabilities and nonlinear problems. For students, this outstanding text offers a painless introduction to this important field; for teachers, a large collection of problems; and for researchers, a concise review of the fundamentals as well as original treatments of a number of topics never before explained so clearly. This revised edition contains new material on kinetic effects, including Bernstein waves and the plasma dispersion function, and on nonlinear wave equations and solitons. For the third edition, updates was made throughout each existing chapter, and two new chapters were added; Ch 9 on ?Special Plasmas? and Ch 10 on Plasma Applications (including Atmospheric Plasmas). 

Introduction.- Single-particle motions.- Plasmas as fluids.- Waves in plasmas.- Diffusion and resistivity.- Equilibrium and stability.- Kinetic theory .- Nonlinear effects.- Special plasmas.- Plasma applications.

Francis F. Chen, known as Frank in the physics community, got his B.A. from Harvard Observatory in 1950. His all-star oral committee consisted of famous astronomers Harlow Shapley, Bart J. Bok, Donald Menzel, and Earl Whipple. With pulsars and quasars still undiscovered, he switched to High Energy Physics, receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1954. He had been sent by his adviser, Nobelist Norman Ramsey, to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked on the Cosmotron and wrote the first experimental thesis for energies at or above 1 GeV. To avoid the Korean War draft, he then went to work for the astronomer Lyman Spitzer, Jr., who had just started the classified Project Matterhorn at Princeton University. This was one of four initial projects in the U.S. to tame the hydrogen bomb to make energy peacefully from the same reaction. In 1954, Chen was one of the first 15 employees at what is now the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Project Matterhorn started in two old buildings, one formerly a rabbit hutch, and the other a horse operating room. Chen inherited the Model B1 Stellarator, built by James van Allen of the famous van Allen radiation belts around the earth. With the B1, Chen was the first to show that electrons could be trapped by a magnetic field for millions of traverses. By then, it was clear that fusion would require trapping a plasma, a hot, ionized gas of electrons and ions, and not just electrons. Subsequent Model B stellarators, however, failed to do this for longer than milliseconds. Realizing that stellarators were magnetic bottles that were curved and not straight, he convinced Spitzer to allow him to build straight machines to isolate the problem, even though these would have leaks at the ends. Chen then built the L-1 and L-2 machines with straight magnetic fields. Experiments on these showed that the plasma was lost by turbulence, and these random motions were aligned along the magnetic field, with wavelengths longer than any plasma