The title of a scientific text or monograph is very important. It should concisely state what the book is about, a serve to guide the potential reader/consumer in deciding if the particular volume is worthy of the investment of his time and/or money. I was therefore disappointed to find that "Numerical Simulation of Plasmas" deals only superficially with this topic. As the authors state in the first line of the preface, the book is devoted to mathematical modeling of tokamak plasmas. It touches only briefly with numerical simulation, and the few methods presented are quite unsophisticated. Strangely, the title of the present English edition has been changed from that of the original 1982 Russian edition "Mathematicheskoe modelirovanie plazmy" (Mathematical Modeling of Plasmas), which is certainly more accurate. The motivation for the title change is unclear.
In brief, the book is an extended review of kinetic, MHD, transport and hybrid models that have been developed to describe the plasma processes in the tokamak magnetic fusion program. Much of the material cannot be extended for use beyond the rather specialized magnetic geometry characterizing such devices. The examples and references draw heavily on Russian work. Only 26 of the 287 pages of text are devoted to the details of numerical methods.
Chapter I provides a brief introduction to controlled fusion in general, and to the tokamak magnetoplasma system in particular. Of some interest is a table that emphasizes the wide range of timescales needed to describe such plasmas, along with the mathematical model appropriate for each. The motion of individual charged particles in tokamak magnetic fields is also developed. No numerical methods or results are discussed.
Chapter II deals with models describing kinetic processes and Coulomb interactions. Emphasis is on linear problems and rf current drive. Nonlinear problems are relegated to a short section at the end of the chapter.
Chapter III develops the specialized topic of tokamak magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). I personally found the development of the reduced tokamak equations (sometimes called the Strauss equations in the West) to be somewhat less than illuminating. Considerable space is devoted to linear stability analysis; less to nonlinear phenomena. No information is given about the numerical algorithms required to perform the difficult and important nonlinear time-dependent tokamak simulations.
Chapter IV deals quite extensively with models for tokamak transport, a field to which the authors have made pioneering contributions. Mathematical models describing neoclassical fluxes, anomalous thermal conduction, magnetic field ripple and impurity transport appear to be well developed.
Chapter V describes hybrid models for the simultaneous description of different physical phenomena that may occur on widely separated space or time scales. Among the examples are: energy balance with neutral beam injection; the effect of the internal kink mode on energy transport (sawtooth oscillations); and the kinetic convective transport of ions in longitudinal magnetic field ripples.
In summary, the title of the book is very misleading, and much of the material is very specialized. A tokamak expert may find the book elementary; a nonspecialist may find it unreadable. The book may be