Preface

This book is aimed at providing an overview of modern atomic, plasma, and accelerator physics and their applications such as inertial thermonuclear fusion, tumor therapy, industrial plasmas, and others. It is a comprehensive edition which considers the interactions of atoms, ions, and molecules with charged particles, photons, and laser fields and reflects the present understanding of atomic processes such as electron capture, ionization, recombination, and other processes occurring in most sources of laboratory and astrophysical plasmas. Although atomic physics and related basic atomic processes have a very long history in the developing course of general modern and precision physics, they are still providing, through newly developed techniques, important new and the most accurate information in basic physics itself as well as related fields such as astrophysics which includes hitherto unknown and unanalyzed phenomena, giving a new understanding and new material production. Some of the most striking applications of the modern atomic physics are associated with cancer/tumor therapy, which ensures curing some illnesses, incurable so far with even modern medicines/medical techniques, with fusion reactions for the future power-generating industrial tokamak devices and with industrial plasmas used for effective production of microchips and integrated circuits. In some respect, this book is a continuation of a previous series of the books such as Physics of Highly Charged Ions (R.K. Janev, L.P. Presnyakov, and V.P. Shevelko, Springer, Berlin, 1985), Atomic Physics with Heavy Ions (H. Beyer, V.P. Shevelko, eds., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1999), Introduction to the Physics of Highly Charged Ions (H. Beyer and V.P. Shevelko, IOP, Bristol, 2003), and The Physics of Multiply and Highly Charged Ions (F.J. Currell, ed., Kluwer Academic Pub., Dordrecht, Boston, London, 2003). However, the present book deals not only with highly charged ions but also with low-charged positive as well as negative ions and neutral atoms. The book consists of 4 parts including about 18 chapters presented by active specialists from Germany, Russia, USA, Japan, France, Brazil, and Korea. In Part I, entitled Atomic Processes in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas, the importance of atomic processes in plasmas is considered. The ball lightning