This is supplemental course information, designed to give you a fuller picture of the course and an expanded look at the topics covered. This is an unofficial document. The USC Course Catalog is the binding description of all university courses. Information such as books, materials covered, and the order of topics is subject to change. Please consult instructor for this semseter to get more upto date course information.

Course:

EE 572a Plasma Dynamics (3 units) Spring 2001 Tom Katsouleas PHE 506, ext. 0-0194
katsoule@usc.edu Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Vol. 1
By F.F. Chen, 2nd Ed., Plenum, NY (1984). Graduate students and advanced undergrads with upper division E&M, concurrently. Plasma, the most abundant and least familiar state of matter in the universe, is of fundamental importance to a wide range of applications in engineering and science. Plasma dynamics is central to high voltage electronics, fusion energy, particle accelerators, semi-conductor processing, space physics, satellite propulsion and astrophysics. The course will cover most of the topics in Introduction to Plasma Physics (above) including waves in magnetized plasmas, Landau damping, instabilities, etc. In addition students will use PIC simulations to study basic processes (Debye shielding, collisions, waves) and some original problems and applications (accelerators, radiation and student selected topics).
Week #
1 What is a plasma?
2-3 Single Particle Motion – drifts and adiabatic invariants
4 Klimontovich to Vlasov equations
5 Intro to Particle-in-cell simulation
6 Fluid equations (moments of the Vlasov Eq.)
7-9 Waves
10 MHD (1 fluid description)
11 Landau damping
12 Space and Astrophysical Plasmas
13 Instabilities
14 Collisions