Plasma Waves and Instabilities

4 units · Graduate courses (200-299)

Lecture, four hours; outside study, eight hours. Requisites: courses 101A, and M185 or Physics M122. Wave phenomena in plasmas described by macroscopic fluid equations. Microwave propagation, plasma oscillations, ion acoustic waves, cyclotron waves, hydromagnetic waves, drift waves. Rayleigh/Taylor, Kelvin/Helmholtz, universal, and streaming instabilities. Application to experiments in fully and partially ionized gases. Letter grading.