Physics 520
Plasma Physics
Spring
Term 2011
11:10-12:20
MWF, Youngchild Hall Room 115
Professor:
Matt Stoneking
Catalog course
description: Plasma
physics is the study of hot, ionized gases. A plasma, being a collection of
charged particles interacting with each other over long distances via electric
and magnetic forces, exhibits a wide array of complex behavior including waves
and instabilities. Plasmas occur abundantly in space and in the earth's
ionosphere. One of the applications of plasma physics is the production of
electric power from nuclear fusion. Topics covered in this course include
motion of charged particles in electric and magnetic fields, plasma kinetic
theory, fluid models, waves and instabilities, wave-particle interactions
(Landau damping), plasma confinement and transport.
Text: No required text. Readings will be assigned from texts on
reserve. Additional handouts and articles
will be distributed in class.
Grading policy: Grades will be assigned based on the
following elements, weighted as indicated.
Laboratory
notebook record: 20%
Lab
reports: 50%
In-class
presentations: 20%
Article
discussion: 10%
Lab Notebook Record: This assignment should be a
familiar one from your advanced lab experience.
I will be looking for regular, dated entries that legibly record your
activities in the lab, your experimental design, procedure, data collection
techniques, data analysis, and calculations.
Lab
Reports: For
each lab activity you will write a formal report. These reports can be somewhat less formal
than your advanced lab paper. The
imagined readers are the members of your research group. I expect these reports to be 4-6 pages
long. The goal of this assignment is to
give you more experience with scientific writing. Hopefully, your reading of primary literature
and our discussion of that literature will also help you to develop a more
professional scientific writing style.
In-class
Presentations: In the early weeks of the term, each student will
be required to make two or three presentations on some aspect of the
technology/instrumentation associated with plasma physics research.
·
Vacuum pumps
·
Pressure gauges
·
Plasma sources
·
Plasma diagnostics
Article
Discussions:
Approximately once per week we will discuss articles from the primary plasma
physics literature. These articles will
not necessarily relate to the laboratory activities in the course, but will be
intended to 1) broaden your exposure to the range of plasma physics research
areas, 2) acquaint you with some of the seminal papers in the field, and 3)
give you more experience reading articles from the physics literature.
Field
Trip: The
University of Wisconsin Madison is a center of plasma physics research. There are multiple research groups in three
different departments. If there is
sufficient interest, I will organize a day trip to Madison where we can tour
several labs and perhaps attend a plasma physics seminar.
Laboratory Activities:
1.
The vacuum diode:
·
Space-charge
limited emission (Child-Langmuir Law)
·
Thermionic
(temperature-limited) emission (Richardson-Dushman Equation)
·
Magnetic
insulation (Hull effect)
2.
Charged particle motion in
magnetic fields (e/m apparatus)
·
Cyclotron
motion
·
Magnetic
mirror
3.
D.C. plasma discharge
·
Townsend
discharge
·
Breakdown
and Paschens Law
·
Effect
of a magnetic field
·
Cyclotron
resonance
4.
Electron-impact ionization and
plasma production
·
Ionization
potential and cross-section
·
Spectroscopy
5.
Langmuir probe diagnosis of
plasmas
·
Floating
potential
·
Ion
saturation current
·
Plasma
potential
·
Temperature
and density
6.
Emissive probe
·
Plasma
potential
ambipolar electric field
7.
Ion acoustic waves
·
Dispersion
relation
·
Landau
damping
8.
Non-neutral plasma waves
·
Diocotron
waves
·
Trivelpiece-Gould
waves