Landau damping

The Landau damping refers to the attenuation of longitudinal pressure waves in plasmas. She was discovered by Lev Landau, a Russian physicist and Nobel laureate.

In a plasma there are fast and slow charged particles. Under certain conditions, there are a total of more slow than fast particles. The excess of slow particles causes them to absorb more energy from the wave, than leave the fast particles to the shaft. Thus, the wave is damped.