This thesis provides deep insights into currently controversial questions in laser filamentation, a highly complex phenomenon involving nonlinear optical effects and plasma physics. First, based on the concrete picture of a femtosecond laser beam which self-pinches its radial intensity distribution, the thesis delivers a novel explanation for the remarkable and previously unexplained phenomenon of pulse self-compression in filaments. Moreover, the work addresses the impact of a non-adiabatic change of both nonlinearity and dispersion on such an intense femtosecond pulse transiting from a gaseous dielectric material to a solid one. Finally, and probably most importantly, the author presents a simple and highly practical theoretical approach for quantitatively estimating the influence of higher-order nonlinear optical effects in optics. These results shed new light on recent experimental observations, which are still hotly debated and may completely change our understanding of filamentation, causing a paradigm change concerning the role of higher-order nonlinearities in optics.

This illustrated monograph explores the fundamentals, current practice, and theoretical perspectives of modern plasma astrophysics. The opening part covers basic principles and practical tools for understanding and working with plasma astrophysics. The second section examines the physics of magnetic reconnection and flares of electromagnetic origin in space plasmas in the solar system, and more. Designed mainly for professional researchers, it will be useful to graduate students in space sciences and geophysics.

This book presents an introduction to, and modern account of, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, an active field both in general turbulence theory and in various areas of astrophysics. The book starts by introducing the MHD equations, certain useful approximations and the transition to turbulence. The second part of the book covers incompressible MHD turbulence, the macroscopic aspects connected with the different self-organization processes, the phenomenology of the turbulence spectra, two-point closure theory, and intermittency. The third considers two-dimensional turbulence and compressible (in particular, supersonic) turbulence. Because of the similarities in the theoretical approach, these chapters start with a brief account of the corresponding methods developed in hydrodynamic turbulence. The final part of the book is devoted to astrophysical applications: turbulence in the solar wind, in accretion disks, and in the interstellar medium. This book is suitable for graduate students and researchers working in turbulence theory, plasma physics and astrophysics.

A variety of plasmas include molecules rather than only ions or atoms. Examples are ionospheres of the Earth and other planets, stellar atmospheres, gaseous discharges for use in various devices and processes, and fusion plasmas in the edge region. This book describes the role of molecules in those plasmas by showing elementary collision processes involving those molecules.

Laser ablation describes the interaction of intense optical fields with matter, in which atoms are selectively driven off by thermal or nonthermal mechanisms. This is the first book that combines the most recent results in this rapidly advancing field with authoritative treatment of laser ablation and its applications, including the physics of high-power laser-matter interaction.

Plasma-Material Interaction in Controlled Fusion deals with the specific contact between the fourth state of matter, i.e. plasma, and the first state of matter, i.e. a solid wall, in controlled fusion experiments. A comprehensive analysis of the main processes of plasma-surface interaction is given together with an assessment of the most critical questions within the context of general criteria and operation limits. It is shown that the choice of plasma-facing materials can be reduced to a very limited list of possible candidates. Plasma-Material Interaction in Controlled Fusion emphasizes that a reliable solution of the material problem can only be found by adjusting the materials to suitable plasma scenarios and vice versa.

This well-illustrated monograph is devoted to classic fundamentals, current practice, and perspectives of modern plasma astrophysics. The level of the book is designed mainly for professional researchers in astrophysics. The book will also be interesting and useful to graduate students in space sciences, geophysics, as well as to advanced students in applied physics and mathematics seeking a unified view of plasma physics and fluid mechanics.

This book presents two reviews from the cutting-edge of Russian plasma physics research. The first review is devoted to the mechanisms of transverse conductivity and generation of self-consistent electric fields in strongly ionized magnetized plasma. The second review considers numerous aspects of turbulent transport in plasma and fluids. This second review is focused on scaling arguments for describing anomalous diffusion in the presence of complex structures.

Earlier books on this subject, i.e. "Sputtering by Particle Bombardment I - III" are nearly 20 years old. Since then a lot of new and important work has been performed and published in international journals. The book gives an overview on all the new results. This concerns especially a new summary of the measured and calculated sputtering yields with an algebraic approximation formula for the energy and angular dependence of the yields. This is especially useful for all researchers who need sputtering yields for physics and/or applied problems. The computational methods for calculating sputtering yields are critically reviewed and molecular dynamics calculations are also included. The influence of chemical effects on sputtering and the new models developed in the last years for understanding these effects such as for hydrogen-ion bombardment of carbon are outlined. New developments such as sputtering by MeV ions and the mechanisms for understanding the effects are presented. The new results about the angular and energy distributions of sputtered atoms are presented in an extra chapter.

An outgrow of an earlier workshop held by the community of European Solar Radio Astronomers (CESRA), this topical volume collects reviews on the current multiwavelength findings and perspectives from the space missions RHESSI, TRACE and SOTTO. The aspects of solar physics dealt with are particle acceleration during flares, large-scale disturbances, and coronal plasma physics.

This book is intended to serve as an introduction to the multidisciplinary ?eld of anomalous diffusion in complex systems such as turbulent plasma, convective rolls, zonal ?ow systems, stochastic magnetic ?elds, etc. In spite of its great importance, turbulent transport has received comparatively little treatment in published mo- graphs. This book attempts a comprehensive description of the scaling approach to turbulent diffusion. From the methodological point of view, the book focuses on the general use of correlation estimates, quasilinear equations, and continuous time random walk - proach. I provide a detailed structure of some derivations when they may be useful for more general purposes. Correlation methods are ?exible tools to obtain tra- port scalings that give priority to the richness of ingredients in a physical pr- lem. The mathematical description developed here is not meant to provide a set of "recipes" for hydrodynamical turbulence or plasma turbulence; rather, it serves to develop the reader's physical intuition and understanding of the correlation mec- nisms involved.

Although based on lectures given for graduate students and postgraduates starting in plasma physics, this concise introduction to the fundamental processes and tools is as well directed at established researchers who are newcomers to spectroscopy and seek quick access to the diagnostics of plasmas ranging from low- to high-density technical systems at low temperatures, as well as from low- to high-density hot plasmas. Basic ideas and fundamental concepts are introduced as well as typical instrumentation from the X-ray to the infrared spectral regions. Examples, techniques and methods illustrate the possibilities. This book directly addresses the experimentalist who actually has to carry out the experiments and their interpretation. For that reason about half of the book is devoted to experimental problems, the instrumentation, components, detectors and calibration.

While the basic operating principles of Helical Magnetic Flux Compression Generators are easy to understand, the details of their construction and performance limits have been described only in government reports, many of them classified. Conferences in the field of flux compression are also dominated by contributions from government (US and foreign) laboratories. And the government-sponsored research has usually been concerned with very large generators with explosive charges that require elaborate facilities and safety arrangements. This book emphasizes research into small generators (less than 500 grams of high explosives) and explains in detail the physical fundamentals, construction details, and parameter-variation effects related to them.

Plasma Physics: Confinement, Transport and Collective Effects provides an overview of modern plasma research with special focus on confinement and related issues. Beginning with a broad introduction, the book leads graduate students and researchers - also those from related fields - to an understanding of the state-of-the-art in modern plasma physics. Furthermore, it presents a methodological cross section ranging from plasma applications and plasma diagnostics to numerical simulations, the latter providing an increasingly important link between theory and experiment. Effective references guide the reader from introductory texts through to contemporary research. Some related exercises in computational plasma physics are supplied on a special web site

If charged particles move through the interplanetary or interstellar medium, they interact with a large-scale magnetic ?eld such as the magnetic ?eld of the Sun or the Galactic magnetic ?eld. As these background ?elds are usually nearly constant in time and space, they can be approximated by a homogeneous ?eld. If there are no additional ?elds, the particle trajectory is a perfect helix along which the par- cle moves at a constant speed. In reality, however, there are turbulent electric and magnetic?elds dueto the interstellaror solar wind plasma. These ?elds lead to sc- tering of the cosmic rays parallel and perpendicular to the background ?eld. These scattering effects, which usually are of diffusive nature, can be described by s- tial diffusion coef?cients or, alternatively, by mean free paths. The knowledge of these parameters is essential for describing cosmic ray propagation as well as d- fusive shock acceleration. The latter process is responsible for the high cosmic ray energies that have been observed. The layout of this book is as follows. In Chap. 1, the general physical scenario is presented. We discuss fundamental processes such as cosmic ray propagation and acceleration in different systems such as the solar system or the interst- lar space. These processes are a consequence of the interaction between charged cosmic particles and an astrophysical plasma (turbulence). The properties of such plasmas are therefore the subject of Chap. 2.

Over the years, many leading European graduate schools in the field of astrophysical and space plasmas have operated within the framework of the research network, "Theory, Observations, and Simulations in Turbulence in Space Plasmas." This text is a set of lectures and tutorial reviews culled from the relevant work of all those schools. It emphasizes applications on solar coronae, solar flares, and the solar wind.

In bridging the gap between standard textbook material and state-of-the-art research, this text offers a broad flavor to postgraduate and postdoctoral students just coming to the field. And because of its unique mix, it will also be useful to lecturers looking for advanced teaching material for their seminars and courses.

For the first time in a book, this monograph describes relativistic and charge-displacement self-channelling, which is the major finding in the physics of superintense laser beams. It also presents general nonlinear models of lasers - plasma interactions specifically in the case of extremely high intensities.

The contents of this book are the result of work performed in the past three years to provide some answers to questions raised by several colleagues wo- inginastrophysics. Examiningseveraltransportprocessesinplasmasrelated to dissipative e?ects in phenomena such as cooling ?ows, propagation of sound waves, thermal conduction in the presence of magnetic ?elds, an- lar momentum transfer in accretion disks, among many, one ?nds a rather common pattern. Indeed when values for transport coe?cients are required the overwhelming majority of authors refer to the classical results obtained by L. Spitzer and S. Braginski over forty years ago. Further, it is also often mentioned that under the prescribed working conditions the values of such coe?cients are usually insu?cient to provide agreement with observations. The methodology followed by these authors is based upon Landau's - oneering idea that collisions in plasmas may be substantially accounted for when viewed as a di?usive process. Consequently the ensuing basic kinetic equation is the Fokker-Planck version of Boltzmann's equation as essentially proposed by Landau himself nearly 70 years ago. Curiously enough the magni?cent work of the late R. Balescu in both Classical and Non-Classical transport in plasmas published in 1988 and also based on the Fokker-Planck equation is hardly known in the astrophysical audience. The previous work of Spitzer and Braginski is analyzed with much more rigorous vision in his two books on the subject.

During the last decade impressive development and signi?cant advance of the physics of nonideal plasmas in astrophysics and in laboratories can be observed, creating new possibilities for experimental research. The enormous progress in laser technology, but also ion beam techniques, has opened new ways for the production and diagnosis of plasmas under extreme conditions, relevant for astrophysics and inertially con?ned fusion, and for the study of laser-matter interaction. In shock wave experiments, the equation of state and further properties of highly compressed plasmas can be investigated. This experimental progress has stimulated the further development of the statistical theory of nonideal plasmas. Many new results for thermodynamic and transport properties, for ionization kinetics, dielectric behavior, for the stopping power, laser-matter interaction, and relaxation processes have been achieved in the last decade. In addition to the powerful methods of quantum statistics and the theory of liquids, numerical simulations like path integral Monte Carlo methods and molecular dynamic simulations have been applied.

This book offers a concise presentation of theoretical concepts characterizing and quantifying the slowing down of swift heavy ions in matter. Although the penetration of charged particles through matter has been studied for almost a hundred years, the quantitative theory for swift penetrating ions heavier than helium has been developed mainly during the past decade and is still progressing rapidly. The book addresses scientists and engineers working at accelerators with an interest in materials analysis and modification, medical diagnostics and therapy, mass spectrometry and radiation damage, as well as atomic and nuclear physicists. Although not a textbook, this monograph represents a unique source of state-of-the-art information that is useful to a university teacher in any course involving the interaction of charged particles with matter.

Over the last quarter of this century, revolutionary advances have been made both in kind and in precision in the application of particle traps to the study of thephysics of charged particles, leading to intensi?ed interest in, and wide proliferation of, this topic. This book is intended as a timely addition to the literature, providing a systematic uni?ed treatment of the subject, from the point of view of the application of these devices to fundamental atomic and particle physics. Thetechniqueofusingelectromagnetic?eldstocon?neandisolateatomic particles in vacuo, rather than by material walls of a container, was initially conceivedbyW.Paulintheformofa3Dversionoftheoriginalrfquadrupole mass ?lter, for which he shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics [1], whereas H.G. Dehmelt who also shared the 1989 Nobel Prize [2] saw these devices (including the Penning trap) as a way of isolating electrons and ions, for the purposes of high resolution spectroscopy. These two broad areas of appli- tion have developed more or less independently, each attaining a remarkable degree of sophistication and generating widespread interest and experimental activity.

This book ushers in a new era of experimental and theoretical investigations into collective processes, structure formation, and self-organization of nuclear matter. It reports the results of experiments wherein for the first time the nuclei constituting our world (those displayed in Mendeleev's table as well as the super-heavy ones) have been artificially created. Pioneering breakthroughs are described, achieved at the Proton-21 Laboratory, Kiev, Ukraine, in a variety of new physical and technological directions.
A detailed description of the main experiments, their analyses, and the interpretation of copious experimental data are given, along with the methodology governing key measurements and the processing algorithms of the data that empirically confirm the occurrence of macroscopic self-organizing processes leading to the nuclear transformations of various materials. The basic concepts underlying the initiation of self-sustaining collective processes that result in the formation of nuclear structures are also examined.

How to realize nucleosynthesis of stable nuclei in the laboratory? Why are metallic meteorites of iron or nickel-iron? Could the iron be nuclear fuel and could an iron star blow up as a supernova? And what could be the energy source of such an explosion? Is it possible to obtain nuclear energy from any terrestrial substance without producing radioactivity? Do super-heavy (Migdal's) nuclei exist, and is it possible to synthesize them in the laboratory? What physical mechanisms could one use to control nuclear transformations and particularly the sign of the overall energy balance involved?
Answers to these and other intriguing questions are to be found in this book."

This monograph develops a unified microscopic basis for phases and phase changes of bulk matter and small systems, based on classical physics. It describes the thermodynamics of ensembles of particles and explains phase transition in gaseous and liquid systems. The origins are derived from simple but physically relevant models of how transitions occur between rigid and fluid states, of how phase equilibria arise, and how they differ for small and large systems.

TO THE SECOND EDITION In the nine years since this book was first written, rapid progress has been made scientifically in nuclear fusion, space physics, and nonlinear plasma theory. At the same time, the energy shortage on the one hand and the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn on the other have increased the national awareness of the important applications of plasma physics to energy production and to the understanding of our space environment. In magnetic confinement fusion, this period has seen the attainment 13 of a Lawson number nTE of 2 x 10 cm -3 sec in the Alcator tokamaks at MIT; neutral-beam heating of the PL T tokamak at Princeton to KTi = 6. 5 keV; increase of average ss to 3%-5% in tokamaks at Oak Ridge and General Atomic; and the stabilization of mirror-confined plasmas at Livermore, together with injection of ion current to near field-reversal conditions in the 2XIIss device. Invention of the tandem mirror has given magnetic confinement a new and exciting dimension. New ideas have emerged, such as the compact torus, surface-field devices, and the EssT mirror-torus hybrid, and some old ideas, such as the stellarator and the reversed-field pinch, have been revived. Radiofrequency heat ing has become a new star with its promise of dc current drive. Perhaps most importantly, great progress has been made in the understanding of the MHD behavior of toroidal plasmas: tearing modes, magnetic Vll Vlll islands, and disruptions.