Plasma Electrodynamics. Linear Theory

From the intro: properties of plasmas as a specific state of matter are to an important extent determined by the fact that there are between the particles which constitute the plasma electromagnetic forces which act over macroscopic distances. Processes occurring in a plasma are therefore as a rule accompanied by the excitation of electromagnetic fields which play a fundamental role in the way these processes develop. The electromagnetic interactions which extend over macroscopic distances show up first of all in the occurrence in the plasma of collective oscillations in which a large number of particles takes part simultaneously. The existence of these specific collective electromagnetic oscillations is just as much a characteristic of a plasma as a specific state of matter as, for instance, the crystalline ordering is for the solid state of matter. This explains the place occupied in plasma physics by plasma electrodynamics, that is, the theory of electromagnetic fields in a plasma-and, in the first instance, the theory of electromagnetic oscillations of a plasma-and the theory of macroscopic electrical and magnetic properties of a plasma. Such problems as the theory of magnetic traps, the problem of plasma heating by external fields or currents, and the theory of instabilities in a non-uniform plasma belong also to the field of plasma electrodynamics in its widest sense. We shall not consider these problems in the present book-not because they are not important; to the contrary, they are of great importance. We restrict ourselves to an exposition of the theory of the electromagnetic properties of a uniform plasma as this theory is the basis of the whole of plasma electrodynamics