THE MANY USES OF PLASMA PHYSICS

摘要

The physics of plasmas has experienced an enormous growth during the last few decades, in its practical as well as in its fundamental aspects. It is thus no longer possible to do justice to the subject in a brief survey even if the scope were limited to cover only the most important applications. Therefore this talk will be restricted to a very cursory and superficial overview of the many uses of plasma physics, in order to demonstrate the diversity of the field. An attempt will be made to focus on the basic plasma features which the various specialties have in common. The best known and probably most challenging application of plasma physics is, of course, controlled fusion. But since this topic has already had very much attention, the emphasis this time will be placed on less well publicized although clearly also very important examples. Some of these are: a) The direct conversion of thermal into electrical energy, as for instance in the thermionic plasma diode;b) new developments in advanced laser technology;c) the production of intense X-ray and neutron bursts;and d) the acceleration of charged particles in col¬lective fields. Many more could be cited but these should suffice to illustrate the richness of plasma physics.