Handbook on Plasma Instabilities

Book excerpt: Handbook on Plasma Instabilities, Volume 3, is primarily intended to serve as a sourcebook for obtaining quick information and literature references pertaining to a specific topic. Such a handbook has to be formulated in a way that enables understanding of any one section without requiring full understanding of any other section. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-13) presents the fundamental concepts of plasma physics with applications, and has more the nature of a textbook treating basic plasma physics, containment, waves, and macroscopic instabilities. Volume 2 (Chapters 14-17) covers various aspects of microinstabilities, beam plasma systems, stabilization methods, and parametric effects. The present volume (Chapters 18-22) starts with a discussion on feedback and dynamic stabilization using parametric and other effects. It then treats nonlinear effects and laser-plasma systems. One chapter is devoted to applications and use of instabilities. It concludes with a report on plasma waves and instabilities in cosmic space.