Whistler-mode Waves in a Hot Plasma

The book provides an extensive theoretical treatment of whistler-mode propagation, instabilities and damping in a hot, anisotropic and collisionless plasma.

Sergei Sazhin (Author)

9780521018272, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 August 2005

272 pages, 103 b/w illus. 20 tables
24.5 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.437 kg

The book provides an extensive theoretical treatment of whistler-mode propagation, instabilities and damping in a collisionless plasma. This book fills a gap between oversimplified analytical studies of these waves, based on the cold plasma approximation, and studies based on numerical methods. Although the book is primarily addressed to space plasma physicists and radio physicists, it will also prove useful to laboratory plasma physicists. Mathematical methods described in the book can be applied in a straightforward way to the analysis of other types of plasma waves. Problems included in this book, along with their solutions, allow it to be used as a textbook for postgraduate students.

1. Basic equations
2. Propagation in a cold plasma
3. Parallel propagation (weakly relativistic approximation)
4. Parallel propagation (non-relativistic approximation)
5. Quasi-longitudinal approximation
6. Quasi-electrostatic approximation
7. Growth and damping of the waves
8. Non-linear effects
9. Application to the Earth's magnetosphere.

Subject Areas: Astrophysics [PHVB]