Landau damping (nonfiction)

In physics, Landau damping, named after its discoverer, the eminent Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau (1908–68), is the effect of damping (exponential decrease as a function of time) of longitudinal space charge waves in plasma or a similar environment. This phenomenon prevents an instability from developing, and creates a region of stability in the parameter space.

Theoretical astrophysicist Donald Lynden-Bell later argued that a similar phenomenon was occurring in galactic dynamics, where the gas of electrons interacting by electrostatic forces is replaced by a "gas of stars" interacting by gravitation forces.

Landau damping can be manipulated exactly in numerical simulations such as particle-in-cell simulation.

It was proved to exist experimentally by Malmberg and Wharton in 1964, almost two decades after its prediction by Landau in 1946.

See also

• Lev Landau (nonfiction)
• Particle-in-cell (nonfiction) - a technique used to solve a certain class of partial differential equations. Individual particles (or fluid elements) in a Lagrangian frame are tracked in continuous phase space, whereas moments of the distribution such as densities and currents are computed simultaneously on Eulerian (stationary) mesh points (see Partition of an interval.

• Landau damping @ Wikipedia