Basic Properties of Plasma

Abstract

As mentioned in Chap. 1, plasma is a conducting gas and, as the fourth state of matter, has properties which are distinct from ordinary neutral gas or nonconduct-ing fluid. In this chapter, we shall describe the basic properties of plasma from a statistical mechanical viewpoint. First, in Sects. 2.1,2, we show the intrinsically collisionless and continuous nature of plasma. In Sect. 2.3 the two fundamental aspects of the plasma motion, the individual and the collective aspects, are shown as being characteristic of a collisionless continuum. Various plasmas are described in Sect. 2.4.