Theory of Turbulent Plasma

Plasma turbulence, which has been observed by many experimenters in recent years, has been found to be much more complicated than turbulence in ordinary liquids. The reason for this is that collective excitations are readily excited in plasma and have different characteristic frequencies (of the order of the Langmuir, Larmor, etc. frequencies) and different characteristic wavelengths (of the order of the Debye radius, the Larmor radius and so on); in liquids collective oscillations do not take place. The absence of such collective oscillations with the characteristic frequencies and wavelengths in incompressible non-viscous liquids has in fact led to the formulation of the energy distribution in the spectrum of strong turbulence in incompressible liquids, which has been confirmed experimentally.

In this monograph we shall review various aspects of the theory of turbulent plasma. In Chapter I we shall summarise the methods available for the description of the dynamics of laminar and weakly turbulent plasma. These methods are used to discuss the properties of collective oscillations (Chapter 2) and to study the stability of the laminar plasma state (Chapter 3). Most of the conclusions of the linear theory of small oscillations and plasma stability have been confirmed experimentally.