Talk:Landau damping

Physical interpretation is total unphysical

The picure is not only misleading but does not fit. All depends on the velocity distribution of the charged particles and the reatio of particle seepd to the phase velocity of the incoming wave. Particles with smaller speed than the wave will gain energie from the wave, since they are accelerated to the resonant state. Particles with faster speed than the wave are able to: get energy from the wave and move away from resonance or can loose energey and come more into the resontant state. It is more likely that charged particles near the resonant state interact with the wave. Meaning these particles will give energy to the wave. Which process dominates? Depends on the velocity distribution of charged particles. Assuming kindergarten Maxwell: There are always less particles with a speed higher than the phase speed of wave => Wave is damped! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.106.236.212 (talk) 09:17, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong

Be careful when describing Landau damping. It has nothing to do with particles trapped in the plasma, but with the energy transfer between the field and the plasma itself. It is a linear phenomenon that occurs because of phase mixing of many modes. This is not clearly stated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.180.174.115 (talk) 12:41, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"In a collisionless plasma the distribution function is often taken to be a Maxwellin" -- this line sounds weird. A collisional plasma relaxes to a Maxwellian, a collisionless plasma allows for non-Maxwellian distribution functions.

Caglioti and Maffei

The reference [8] was added to this article using an IP address from University of Roma which is the affiliation of the authors. The paper is rarely cited. Does this paper contains significant results which should be mentioned by Wikipedia?

[8] Caglioti, E. and Maffei, C. "Time asymptotics for solutions of Vlasov-Poisson equation in a circle", J. Statist. Phys. 92, 1-2, 301-323 (1998) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.171.41.142 (talk) 00:30, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Landau's Reason for looking into Plasma

My professor told me that he once asked a student of Landau's why Landau was even looking into plasmas to begin with (Landau was known for/more interested in low temperature physics). According to my prof. the student told him that the Soviets asked him to shame Vlasov for political reasons. When I went on to read his paper, the introduction alone convinced me that this reason was plausible. Obviously this type of thing would be off the record, so it wouldn't be fitting to put this into the article, but I was wondering if anyone could corroborate this.Gunblader928 (talk) 23:43, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]