Gianpiero Colonna – författare

Hypersonic Meteoroid Entry Physics provides a fascinating overview of meteoroid atmospheric entry and covers meteoroid observations in outer space; the description of the chemical-physical phenomena during atmospheric entry; recovery of the meteor on the Earth's surface and meteorite chemical analysis.

The book, based on the lectures given during the HyMEP course held in Erice in 2017, is addressed to students and researchers with an interest in plasma chemistry, astrophysics and aerospace engineering. It offers a comprehensive overview of the present status of the investigation on meteoroid entry physics while merging the knowledge of astrophysicists and the aerospace engineering communities.

Plasma Modeling: Methods and applications presents and discusses the different approaches that can be adopted for plasma modeling, giving details about theoretical and numerical methods. It describes kinetic models used in plasma investigations, develops the theory of fluid equations and hybrid models, and discusses applications and practical problems across a range of fields.

This updated second edition contains over 200 pages of new material, including an extensive new part that discusses methods to calculate data needed in plasma modeling, such as thermodynamic and transport properties, state specific rate coefficients in heavy particle collisions and electron impact cross sections. This updated research and reference text is an excellent resource to assist and direct students and researchers who want to develop research activity in the field of plasma physics in the choice of the best model for the problem of interest.

Key Features:

Fundamental Aspects of Plasma Chemical Physics - Thermodynamics develops basic and advanced concepts of plasma thermodynamics from both classical and statistical points of view.

After a refreshment of classical thermodynamics applied to the dissociation and ionization regimes, the book invites the reader to discover the role of electronic excitation in affecting the properties of plasmas, a topic often overlooked by the thermal plasma community.

Particular attention is devoted to the problem of the divergence of the partition function of atomic species and the state-to-state approach for calculating the partition function of diatomic and polyatomic molecules. The limit of ideal gas approximation is also discussed, by introducing Debye-Huckel and virial corrections.

Throughout the book, worked examples are given in order to clarify concepts and mathematical approaches.

This book is a first of a series of three books to be published by the authors on fundamental aspects of plasma chemical physics.  The next books will discuss transport and kinetics.

Describing non-equilibrium "cold" plasmas through a chemical physics approach, this book uses the state-to-state plasma kinetics, which considers each internal state as a new species with its own cross sections. Extended atomic and molecular master equations are coupled with Boltzmann and Monte Carlo methods to solve the electron energy distribution function. Selected examples in different applied fields, such as microelectronics, fusion, and aerospace, are presented and discussed including the self-consistent kinetics in RF parallel plate reactors, the optimization of negative ion sources and the expansion of high enthalpy flows through nozzles of different geometries.

The book will cover the main aspects of the state-to-state kinetic approach for the description of nonequilibrium cold plasmas, illustrating the more recent achievements in the development of kinetic models including the self-consistent coupling of master equations and Boltzmann equation for electron dynamics.To give a complete portrayal, the book will assess fundamental concepts and theoretical formulations, based on a unified methodological approach, and explore the insight in related scientific problems still opened for the research community.