Awesome Plasma Physics Courses

:books: List of awesome university courses to learn Plasma Physics and Fusion!

This list is an attempt to collect great plasma physics and fusion courses which make their high-quality material (i.e., assignments, lectures, notes, readings and examinations) available online for free.

Contents

• Plasma Physics
• Nuclear Fusion
• MHD
• Transport
• Waves
• Computational Physics
• Meta
• Talks

Plasma Physics

• 22611, Introduction to Plasma Physics I - MIT (2003).
  • The course introduces plasma phenomena relevant to energy generation by controlled thermonuclear fusion and to astrophysics, coulomb collisions and transport processes, motion of charged particles in magnetic fields, plasma confinement schemes, MHD models, simple equilibrium and stability analysis. It also covers two-fluid hydrodynamic plasma models, wave propagation in a magnetic field, kinetic theory, Vlasov plasma model, electron plasma waves and Landau damping, ion-acoustic waves, and streaming instabilities.
• 525, Introduction to Plasmas - WISC (1990).
  • Develop an understanding of plasmas and models used to describe a plasma, and explore their applications. Additional resources could be found here.
• 761, Plasma Physics I - UMD (2017).
  • An introduction to the basic concepts and phenomena of plasma physics. Topics include: Ionization and collisional processes, kinetic and fluid treatments, wave-particle interactions and quasilinear theory, MHD theory, plasma waves, particle orbits and plasma stability. These topics will be discussed as they apply to laboratory and space plasmas.
• 762, Plasma Physics II - UMD (2017).
  • The dynamics of plasmas are often controlled by nonlinear behavior. This course will introduce some of the basic techniques which have been developed to understand and describe these dynamics with applications in space and laboratory plasmas. Topics include nonlinear waves and shocks, wave-particle interactions, quasilinear theory and maps, wave-wave interactions, parametric instabilities, drift-waves and transport, Navier Stokes and MHD turbulence, cascade processes and internittancy, magnetic reconnection and the dynamo.
• Plasmaphysik I - LMU (2012).
  • An introduction to the basic concepts and phenomena of plasma physics.
• Plasmaphysik II - Kernfusionsforschung - LMU (2010).
  • Topics include: introduction to nuclear fusion, magnetic confinement nuclear fusion, transport in magnetized plasmas, plasma diagnostics.
• Plasma Physics: Introduction - EPFL (2017).
  • Topics include: Applications, which deals with plasma applications in astrophysics, industry, medicine, nuclear fusion and laser-plasma interaction. There is also an advanced course on plasma applications. Videos are available without registration on YouTube
• Plasma Physics II - Bicocca (2022).
  • Topics include an introduction to plasma physics, single particle motion in electric and magnetic fields, collisions and Fokker-Planck theory, collisional transport, introduction to thermonuclear fusion. All lecture recordings are available on the course homepage.
• 029:194, Plasma Physics I - IOWA (2010).
  • Physics of ionized gases, including orbit theory, guiding center motion, adiabatic invariants, ionization balance description of plasmas by fluid variables and distribution functions; linearized wave motions, instabilities; magnetohydrodynamics.

Nuclear Fusion

• Introduction to Fusion Energy and Plasma Physics - Princeton (2020).
  • The Summer Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) course is a summer school regularly given at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). It consists of a series of lectures ranging from an introductory level into plasma physics and nuclear fusion to specialized talks about turbulence in plasmas, plasma propulsion, and complex plasmas, to give just a few examples.
• Fusion Research - Stuttgart (2020).
  • General introduction to nuclear fusion.
• Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics - KU Leuven (2015).
  • The Carolus Magnus Summer School aims at graduate and postgraduate students active in or becoming active in controlled thermonuclear fusion. Lecture notes are available here.
• Magnetic Confinement Fusion - Oxford (2014).
  • General course on magnetic confinement fusion, covering topics such as MHD, neoclassical transport, plasma waves, heating, instabilities and turbulence. The course is taught to MSc and PhD students in the second term, and assumes some prior knowledge of basic plasma physics e.g. Larmor orbits and Debye length.

MHD

• 22.615, MHD Theory of Fusion Systems - MIT (2007).
  • This course discusses MHD equilibria in cylindrical, toroidal, and noncircular tokamaks. It covers derivation of the basic MHD model from the Boltzmann equation, use of MHD equilibrium theory in poloidal field design, MHD stability theory including the Energy Principle, interchange instability, ballooning modes, second region of stability, and external kink modes. Emphasis is on discovering configurations capable of achieving good confinement at high beta.
• MA5902, A mathematical introduction to Magnetohydrodynamics - TUM (2019).
  • The course provides a basic introduction to magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), with emphasis on its mathematical aspects (as opposite to physical phenomena). Essentially, MHD is the theory of electrically conducting fluids in presence of a magnetic field. Since MHD is one of the two building blocks (together with kinetic theory) of theoretical plasma physics, its understanding is of paramount importance for applied mathematicians who deal with plasma physics and nuclear fusion applications.
• Advanced Fluid Dynamics - Oxford (2020).
  • Part I: MHD equations: conservation laws in a conducting fluid; Maxwell stress/magnetic forces; induction equation; Lundquist theorem, flux freezing, amplification of magnetic field. MHD in a strong guide field: MHD waves; high-beta and anisotropic limits and orderings; incompressible MHD, Elsasser MHD, Reduced MHD. Static MHD equilibria, force-free solutions, helicity, Taylor relaxation. Energy principle. Instabilities: interchange, Z-pinch.
  • Part II: Fluid mechanics with general extra stress. Dilute suspension of spheres: Einstein viscosity. Dilute suspension of beads on springs: Oldroyd-B model for polymeric liquids, elastic waves, anisotropic pressure. Dilute suspension of orientable particles (ellipsoids): road map to liquid crystals, swimmers and active matter.
• Plasma Fluid Theory - National Research Foundation of Korea (2019).
  • This course requires basic undergraduate physics knowledge and starts with simple fluid mechanics, going then into a wide range of topics including 2-fluid treatment, magnetohydroynamics (MHD), and more. Lecture notes are available here.

Transport

• 22.616, Plasma Transport Theory - MIT (2003).
  • This course describes the processes by which mass, momentum, and energy are transported in plasmas, with special reference to magnetic confinement fusion applications. The Fokker-Planck collision operator and its limiting forms, as well as collisional relaxation and equilibrium, are considered in detail. Special applications include a Lorentz gas, Brownian motion, alpha particles, and runaway electrons. The Braginskii formulation of classical collisional transport in general geometry based on the Fokker-Planck equation is presented. Neoclassical transport in tokamaks, which is sensitive to the details of the magnetic geometry, is considered in the high (Pfirsch-Schluter), low (banana) and intermediate (plateau) regimes of collisionality.

Waves

• 553 Plasma Waves and Instabilities - Princeton (2017).
  • Hydrodynamic and kinetic models of nonmagnetized and magnetized plasma dispersion; basic plasma waves and their applications; basic instabilities; mechanisms of collisionless dissipation; geometrics-optics approximation, including ray tracing, field-theoretical description of continuous waves, and ponderomotive effects; conservation laws and transport equations for the wave action, energy, and momentum; mode conversion; quasilinear theory.

Computational Physics

• Computational Plasma Physics - TUM (2016).
  • The lecture will provide an introduction to scientific computing with application to plasma physics and magnetic fusion. We well introduce spectral (FFT based) numerical methods as well as Finite Differences and Finite Elements highlighting the essential concepts of consistency and stability. The classical kinetic and fluid descriptions of plasmas will be introduced and the numerical methods will be applied to the computation of MHD equilibria in a Tokamak with the Grad-Shafranov equation and then to the linear MHD stability problem. Finally an introduction to kinetic simulation based on spectral and PIC methods will be proposed and applied to the 1D Landau damping and bump-on-tail problems. An exercise class will be associated to the lecture where the methods introduced in the lecture will be coded in MATLAB.

Meta

• James D. Callen Plasma Physics Lectures Notes - WISC.
  • A collection of plasma physics courses, papers, books, videotapes and handwritten lecture notes. Lectures include: plasma confinement and heating, waves and instabilities in plasmas, plasma kinetic theory and plasma MHD.

Talks

• Fusion-EP Talks
  • A student-led seminar of the European Master In Fusion Science and Engineering program.