Computer Applications in Plasma Science and Engineering

This volume, which contains 15 contributions, is based on a minicourse held at the 1987 IEEE Plasma Science Meeting. The purpose of the lectures in the course was to acquaint the students with the multidisciplinary nature of computational techniques and the breadth of research areas in plasma science in which computation can address important physics and engineering design issues. These involve: electric and magnetic fields, MHD equations, chemistry, radiation, ionization etc. The contents of the contributions, written subsequent to the minicourse, stress important aspects of computer applications. They are: 1) the numerical methods used; 2) the range of applicability; 3) how the methods are actually employed in research and in the design of devices; and, as a compendium, 4) the multiplicity of approaches possible for any one problem. The materials in this book are organized by both subject and applications which display some of the richness in computational plasma physics.