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Plasma Physics

What is Plasma? The electromagnetic force is generally observed to create structure: e.g., stable atoms and molecules, crystalline solids. In fact, the most widely studied consequences of the electromagnetic force form the subject matter of Chemistry and Solid-State Physics, which are both disciplines developed to understand essentially static structures. Structured systems have binding energies larger than the ambient thermal energy. Placed in a suf�ciently hot environment, they decompose: e.g., crystals melt, molecules disassociate. At temperatures near or exceeding atomic ionization energies, atoms similarly decompose into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. These charged particles are by no means free: in fact, they are strongly affected by each others� electromagnetic �elds. Nevertheless...

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