Plasma Modeling (Second Edition)

This book presents and discusses the different approaches that can be adopted for plasma modeling, giving details about theoretical and numerical methods, enriched by a comprehensive bibliography for a deeper insight into the problem. The book is intended to assist and direct students and researchers, who want to develop research activity in the field of plasma physics, in the choice of the best model for the problem of interest. Each chapter is focused on a specific problem and written by experts in the field, giving details on computational techniques often not fully described in scientific papers.

The book is organised in three parts. The first describes kinetic models used in plasma investigations, such as the two- and multi-term approximations of the Boltzmann equation and the particle-in-cell method, with the derivation of the basic equations. The second part develops the derivation of the theory of fluid equations and of hybrid models. The third part is devoted to applications, considering some practical problems of interest in different fields such as high-pressure discharges, high-enthalpy flows and plasma torches.

The new edition contains approx. 200 pages of new material, including new chapters on cold plasma simulations, simplified approaches for thermal plasma modelling, simplified approaches for cross sections and rate coefficients, hypersonic flows, plasma confinement in Tokamaks, and Coulomb explosions in laser-plasma interactions.