Lecture notes and exercises on astrophysical gas dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics

Geoff Bicknell

Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics

And Department of Physics & Theoretical Physics

Australian National University

Here are a number of lectures on astrophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics. There is some overlap with these since they were used in different courses.

The following documents are all in pdf format. You will need acrobat reader 4.0 or later in order to read them. It is useful if you have Acrobat Reader configured as a helper application for your browser. The latest version is available from http://www.adobe.com

Course outline

· Topics, lectures, assessment etc.

Lecture Notes

• Fluids and Kinetic Theory
• MHD Kinetic Theory
• Magnetic Forces
• Sound Waves
• MHD Waves
• Magnetic Virial Theorem
• Simple Waves
• De Laval Nozzle
• Shocks
• Stellar Winds
• Bubbles
• The Sedov Solution
• Unmagnetised Winds
• Magnetised Winds
• Instabilities
• Kelvin Helmholtz Instability
• Relativistic Fluids
• Relativistic Applications

Exercises

· Complete set

· Set 1 Solutions

Background knowledge

· Cartesian_Tensors

This page maintained by Geoff Bicknell: Geoff.Bicknell@anu.edu.au

Last updated 26 April, 2010