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 nonconducting 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.
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References
M.N. Saha: On a Physical Theory of Stellar Spectra, Proc. Roy. Soc. A 99, 135 (1921);
W.B. Thompson, An Introduction to Plasma Physics (Pergamon, Oxford 1961) Sect. 2.3
N.A. Krall, A.W. Trivelpiece: Principles of Plasma Physics (McGraw-Hill, New York 1973) Chap. I, Part Two
H. Griem: Spectral Line Broadening by Plasmas (Academic, New York 1974)
G.Y. Marc Plasma Spectroscopy (Elsevier, Amsterdam 1968)
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Nishikawa, K., Wakatani, M. (1990). Basic Properties of Plasma. In: Plasma Physics. Springer Series on Atoms+Plasmas, vol 8. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-02658-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-02658-8_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-02660-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-02658-8
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