Computational Plasma Science: Physics and Selected Simulation Examples

The book presents fundamentals of plasma physics with rich references and computational techniques in a concise manner. It particularly focuses on introductions to numerical simulation methods in plasma physics, in addition to those to physics and mathematics in plasma physics. It also presents the fundamentals of numerical methods, which solve mathematical models of plasmas, together with examples of numerical results. A discretization method, the so-called finite difference method, is introduced for particle-in-cell methods and fluid codes, which have been widely employed in plasma physics studies. In addition to the introduction to numerical solutions, it also covers numerical stability. The instabilities and numerical errors significantly influence the results, and for correct results, great efforts are required to avoid such numerical artifacts. The book also carefully discusses the numerical errors, numerical stability, and uncertainty in numerical computations.

Readers are expected to have an understanding of fundamental physics of mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, statistical physics, relativity, fluid dynamics, and mathematics, but the book does not assume background knowledge on plasma. Therefore, it is a first book of plasma physics for upper undergraduate and early graduate students who are interested in learning it.