Collisionless Plasmas in Astrophysics

This book focus on plasma physics with a specific emphasis on the peculiarities of the “collisionless“ properties of those media. Collisionless here means free of ion-collisions. Such an approach does not exist in the present literature although the collisionless condition is ubiquitous in space- and astrophysics as well in some laboratory devices devoted to magnetic fusion, like ITER. Furthermore, it leads to specific problems that are often misunderstood by physicists of other domains. It is not possible to use ordinary thermodynamics or any statistical physics based on a small departure from thermal equilibrium.

Furthermore, the theory illustrated with concrete applications mainly taken in space physics (solar corona, solar wind, magnetospheres, and auroral phenomena) and in astrophysics (relativistic shocks, cosmic ray acceleration) will be presented. In the book some indications on the numerical simulation of the collisionless plasmas is presented, whereas other classical textbooks were written before the present development of these techniques.

From the contents:
• Introduction
• Plasma descriptions and plasma models
• The magnetized plasmas
• Collisional-collisionless
• Waves in plasmas
• Non linear effects, shocks and turbulence
• Flow and particle acceleration processes
• Transport and acceleration of cosmic rays
• The kinetic-fl uid duality