Workshop on Wave-Particle Interaction and Energization in Plasmas

Abstract

Sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities.During the “1987 Spring College on Plasma Physics” Professor Abdus Salam asked us to help organize the plasma physics activity at the ICTP with the hope that more Europeans would get involved in the endeavors of diffusing modern plasma physics knowledge to the participants who come mostly from developing countries. In order to fulfill his expectations, we formed a European team for organizing at least a one-week workshop during the biennial activity of the Spring College on Plasma Physics at Trieste.Since 1989, we have taken an active part in organizing the fourth week of the Spring College on Plasma Physics at the ICTP. We have also brought out the lecture notes in the form of Topical Issues in Physica Scripta, for distributing the advanced scientific materials to the participants. This fourth week has now become a permanent feature of the ICTP plasma physics activity and serves the purpose of bringing together scientists from different parts of the world in a forum so that they can exchange ideas and interact for mutual benefits.This year we focused on wave-particle interaction and energization in plasmas. The present topics fall within one of the most advanced areas of plasma physics, where there is an urgent need to understand the turbulent as well as the coherent plasma wave phenomena. We invited distinguished lecturers, who presented the fundamentals of interactions in plasmas. The lectures covered basic as well as advanced topics dealing with wave phenomena, which are of current interest in laboratory and space plasmas. Accordingly, the morning lectures were centered around a unified theme covering quasilinear theory in the context of weak turbulence, wave-wave interactions, theory and computer simulations of magnetic field reconnection, as well as the generation of coherent nonlinear structures in laboratory plasmas. In the afternoon sessions, the lecturers went on to describe the present state of the art with various aspects of wave-particle interactions. They focused on the generation of intense waves, arrest of wave collapse, distortion of the distribution functions, as well as charged particle acceleration in space and laboratory plasmas. The highlights of these activities were documented in the invited papers, which are presented in this issue of Physica Scripta. This material supplements the existing plasma physics literature and should be valuable to the plasma physics community.As in the past, we have received wholehearted support from Professors Abdus Salam, Luciano Bertocchi, and Mohamed H A Hassan. We are grateful to them for giving us the opportunity to organize the present workshop within the activities of the Spring College on Plasma Physics.Thanks are also due to the ICTP and the Commission of the European Community in Brussels for providing financial support to our activities at Trieste.Finally, our cordial thanks are extended to the invited speakers for coming to Trieste, delivering excellent talks, supplying well prepared manuscripts for publication, and enhancing the activity of the Spring College on Plasma Physics at the ICTP.