Chapter Ten: Magnetohydrodynamics

The kinetic equations can often be too complicated to solve. On the other hand, the wave, transport, and fluid effects, may be understood by a few smoothed and averaged local variables in the configuration space to reveal the governing principles by simplification with clarification. Resorting to the MHD model thus has many advantages. By neglecting some detailed structures, the large-scale phenomena may be explored from the macroscopic quantities to establish the global understanding of (fusion) plasma, allow fundamentally new design concept, give better intuition for the experimental observables, and study major instabilities that severely limit the achievable plasma parameters.