Principles of Magnetoplasma Dynamics

Besides a general account of magnetoplasma behaviour, the book contains a new theory that explains tokamak losses and related processes.

---

A magnetoplasma is an ionized gas in a magnetic field strong enough to dominate the motions of the ions and electrons. Examples of naturally occurring magnetoplasmas are the sun and the interplanetary solar wind. Magnetoplasmas have been created in laboratories; for example, in controlled fusion research very hot plasmas are confined in strong magnetic fields. To understand magnetoplasma behaviour some knowledge of fluid mechanics, kinetic theory of gases, particle dynamics, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics is required. One objective of this book is to give a self-contained treatment that provides a sufficient background in those subjects. Another is to present a new theory of the transport of energy and stress across strong magnetic fields and to apply this to shock waves and to the toroidal fusion machines known as a 'tokamak'. Comparisons between theory and experiment are made where possible. A new treatment of guiding centre theory removes the paradoxes from that subject, and makes evident the reason for the failure of present (neo-classical) tokamak theory to account for any of the observed phenomena.
The new transport theory is shown to give good agreement with measurements of losses of plasma and energy from tokamaks, and it also accounts for sawtooth oscillations, momentum diffusion, disruptions, density limits, and other related tokamak phenomena. This book is aimed at teachers and postgraduates in fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, and plasma physics, thermodynamicists, scientists in fusion thermodynamics and applied mathematicians.