Book excerpt: Divided into three main parts, the book guides the reader to an understanding of the basic concepts in this fascinating field of research. Part 1 introduces you to the fundamental concepts of simulation. It examines one-dimensional electrostatic codes and electromagnetic codes, and describes the numerical methods and analysis. Part 2 explores the mathematics and physics behind the algorithms used in Part 1. In Part 3, the authors address some of the more complicated simulations in two and three dimensions. The book introduces projects to encourage practical work Readers can download plasma modeling and simulation software — the ES1 program — with implementations for PCs and Unix systems along with the original FORTRAN source code. Now available in paperback, Plasma Physics via Computer Simulation is an ideal complement to plasma physics courses and for self-study.