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Fusion Science and Technology
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The Frisch-Peierls memorandum: A seminal document of nuclear history
The Manhattan Project is usually considered to have been initiated with Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in October 1939. However, a lesser-known document that was just as impactful on wartime nuclear history was the so-called Frisch-Peierls memorandum. Prepared by two refugee physicists at the University of Birmingham in Britain in early 1940, this manuscript was the first technical description of nuclear weapons and their military, strategic, and ethical implications to reach high-level government officials on either side of the Atlantic. The memorandum triggered the initiation of the British wartime nuclear program, which later merged with the Manhattan Engineer District.
Karl H. Spatschek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 2 | March 2002 | Pages 119-134
Kinetic Theory | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A11963509
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The statistical description of a hot, magnetized, classical plasma is reviewed. The latter represents the appropriate model for a fusion plasma in magnetic confinement. Various approaches are presented. We start with the Fokker-Planck equation for Langevin dynamics. It is shown that also a deterministic model leads to characteristic non-equilibrium behaviors in the so called kinetic regime. The Boltzmann equation for dilute gases is presented, and the differences between the kinetic and the hydrodynamic regimes are worked out. In the main part, the consequences of long-range Coulomb interactions are demonstrated. Several plasma-kinetic equations, like for instance the Balescu-Lenard equation, are discussed. Physical consequences from the linearization of the kinetic equations, e.g. collision frequencies and Landau damping, are elucidated. In the final part of the paper the specific reformulations in magnetized plasmas are investigated. The drift-kinetic and the gyrokinetic approaches are presented. The paper is concluded by an outlook on often used truncations.