Nonlinear physics of plasmas (Q5962304)

This textbook presents, at the graduate level, all the main necessary tools for a good understanding of nonlinear aspects in plasma physics. Part 1 provides the reader with basic concepts and fundamental theories from general plasma physics including both kinetic theory (Landau damping, girokinetic theory, etc.) and fluid theory applied to transport phenomena and magnetohydrodynamics. In Part 2, the analysis of coherent structures is applied to turbulence and chaos. Two chapters are devoted to the study of collective excitations as solitons and vortices and the main ideas on chaos in dissipative systems are introduced, including Liapunov exponents and dimension of attractors. Part 3 deals with strong Langmuir turbulence, wave collapse regimes, spatiotemporal complexity and self-organized dissipative structures. The last chapter studies laser plasma interaction in the relativistic regime -- a problem of particular interest in the fast ignition concept for inertial confinement fusion. The last section (Part 4) studies plasma edge turbulence and its multiscale description -- an important object of present research in understanding plasma confinement in magnetic fusion devices.