Xuening Bai's Teaching Page
Plasma Astrophysics (Harvard, 2016 Spring)I co-taught graduate student course Astronomy 253 on Plasma Astrophysics with Nick Murphy at Harvard University in Spring 2016. This was the second time that the course was offered at Harvard. Development of this course has benefited from the 2014 course materials when this course was first taught by Steven Cranmer and Nick Murphy, listed textbooks and reading materials, as well as input from colleagues, particularly from Matthew Kunz, Jim Stone, Lorenzo Sironi, and Ramesh Narayan.Listed below are my half of the course materials and lecture notes. The remaining course materials can be accessed from Nick Murphy's teaching page. If you find any errors/typos, please let me know. Syllabus Introduction Lecture Handout: Plasma scales Handout: Particle motion Lecture: Accretion disks Handout: Accretion disks Handout: Vlasov equations, cold plasma waves Handout: Thermal effects Handout: Non-linear effects Handout: Collisions and transport Handout: Kinetic MHD Lecture: Dilute plasmas Handout: Firehose instability Lecture: Cosmic-rays Handout: Particle acceleration Lecture: Computational MHD Return to top Return to homepage |