Basic plasma theory—Kinetics

The range of phenomena concerned with the role of collisions in plasmas at high temperatures and how they bring a plasma into thermal equilibrium is nowadays usually called “kinetics”, a word adopted from the Russian literature. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the subject of deriving kinetic equations, like the Boltzmann or Fokker‐Planck equations which describe the approach to equilibrium, from the Liouville equation. In particular, there have been new formal advances in the application of these ideas to plasmas, plus a clearer understanding of the basic physical phenomena. I will try in the following to treat both of these.