A short introduction to plasma physics

Abstract

This chapter contains a short discussion of some fundamental plasma phenomena. In section 2 we introduce key plasma properties like quasineutrality, shielding, particle transport processes and sheath formation. In section 3 we describe the simplest plasma models: collective phenomena (drifts) deduced from single-particle trajectories and fundamentals of plasma fluid dynamics. The last section discusses wave phenomena in homogeneous, unbounded, cold plasma.