Basic space plasma physics.

Authors Wolfgang Baumjohann, Rudolf A. Treumann

Publication date 8 June 2012

Magnetohydrodynamics and electrohydrodynamics (76W05) Ionized gas flow in electromagnetic fields; plasmic flow (76X05) Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to statistical mechanics (82-01) Statistical mechanics of plasmas (82D10) Meteorology and atmospheric physics (86A10)

Review text

The book is meant to be an introduction to plasma physics for students of geophysics (mainly interested in interplanetary questions, solar wind and ionospheric problems). The phenomena, which are treated, are embedded in the general structure and at the same time are always limited when some concretely specified model is treated. At the end of the chapters, series of questions (problems) are given. The answers are not given explicitly, but, if necessary, some hints to the solutions are given in the text to promote -- and to be sure -- that the reader will use his own capacities and the knowledge earned from this book to find the answer.NEWLINENEWLINELet us present the book's structure. After an introduction, giving the definition of plasma, its connection to the solar wind, to the magnetosphere and to the ionosphere is presented.NEWLINENEWLINE The gyration in a magnetic field, drift motions and adiabatic invariants are studied. Next, trapped particles in dipole fields are treated with bounce and drift motion, concluding in radiation belts and ring currents. Collision and conductivity problems follow. (Here, too, the geophysical importances are stressed by considering problems of the ionosphere.) A separate chapter deals with convection and substorms (magnetic diffusion, the convection electric field, corotation, ionospheric convection, the auroral electrojet, substorm physics are treated here). Then, an elementary review is given on kinetic theories. Next, magnetohydrodynamics is reviewed, from multi-fluid theory to single-fluid theory (a special subchapter is devoted to the equation of the state problem, isotropic and anisotropic pressures, double-adiabatic invariants). The question of stationarity and equilibrium is treated next (with diamagnetic drift, neutral sheet currents and field aligned currents). An important subchapter evaluates the validity of magnetohydrodynamics. An interesting chapter deals with flows and discontinuities (solar wind, MHD-discontinuities, shocks, Earth's bow shock, Earth's magnetopause). Two chapters are devoted to wave phenomena. The first one starts with unmagnetized fluids, a general description of dispersion relations, plasma wave energy and MHD waves, cold electron plasma waves, two-fluid plasma waves, concluding with geomagnetic pulsations. The second one treats wave kinetic theory. This description starts with the Landau-Laplace procedure, treats Landau-damping, then ``nearly all special wave types are discussed. (This procedure merits special attention because of the very skilful presentation of the derivation and good illustrations.) The next chapter deals with the instability problem (after giving a review of weak instabilities, non-oscillatory instabilities and thermal fluctuations are presented). A chapter introduces collisionless reconnections and another one collisionless shocks. The book ends with useful basic tables and a collection of important formulas, a brief review of important notions concerning the Coulomb-logarithm, transport coefficients, geomagnetic indices and later the derivation of the magnetized dielectric tensor.

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