Scope of questions for State exams of Bachelor's degree program
Branch: Physics of Plasma and Thermonuclear Fusion
Subject: Principles of Plasma Physics
Subjects regarding the questions:
- 16PFIZ12 Principles of Plasma Physics
1. Basic characteristics and classification of plasma -Debye length, plasma frequency, plasma parameter, Coulomblogarithm, collision frequency, cyclotron frequency, Larmor radius, coupling parameter, ideal plasma, equation of state.
2. Particle description of plasma, drift, adiabatic invariants, magnetic mirror principle, ponderomotive force, Particle-in-Cell simulation.
3. Kinetic and hydrodynamic description of plasma, derivation of kinetic equations, Vlasov equation, elastic collisions, Fokker-Planck collision term, transition to two-fluid hydrodynamics, pressure tensor, heat flux.
4. Electron plasma waves, dispersion relations, Landau damping, collisional damping, upper hybrid wave, two-stream instability.
5. Ion acoustic wave, plasma approximation, dispersion relation and damping, Alfvén wave, magnetoacoustic wave.
6. Electromagnetic waves in plasma without and with static magnetic field, dispersion relations, absorption mechanisms, cutoff frequency and resonance, CMA diagram, parametric instabilities.
7. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) description of plasma, ideal and non-ideal MHD, magnetic pressure, hydromagnetic equilibrium, parameter beta.
8. Diffusion, mobility, ambipolar diffusion, diffusion across the magnetic field, sheath (near wall layer), collisionless shock wave, thermal and electrical conductivity of plasma, electron-ion relaxation.
9. Atomic plasma physics, ionization and excitation states, collision and radiation processes, plasma emission, optically thin and thick media, local thermodynamic equilibrium, Saha equation, the principle of detailed equilibrium.
10. Nuclear processes in hot plasma, nuclear fusion, ignition temperature, Lawson criterion, systems with magnetic confinement, principle of tokamak, principles of inertial-confinement fusion.