Introduction to magnetohydrodynamics

Question

does anybody have any reference books for introduction to magnetohydrodynamics? I want to dive into this topic and I don´t know about any good reference.

Answer 1

If you want a very quick introduction to Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) I would recommend Reitz, Milford and Christie's 'Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory'.

If you are willing to take a leisurely path that will build your foundations you can choose Arnab Rai Choudhuri's 'Physics of Fluids and Plasmas'. The author does a phenomenal job in starting from the microscopic equations of motion and building the equations of neutral fluids and plasmas. The book has two sections, divided evenly between neutral fluids and plasmas with plenty of examples from astronomy to illustrate the principles.

More classic works would be the books by a) T G Cowling (Magnetohydrodynamics), b) Lymon Spitzer (Physics of Fully Ionized Gases) and c) S. Chandrasekhar (Plasma Physics).

Of these, only the first book uses SI units.

Answer 2

Goedbloed and Poedt's Principles of Magnetohydrodynamics (Amazon link) is a good primer on MHD.¹ If I recall correctly, the book is primarily aimed at the physics of tokamaks, but many of the principles found therein can be applied to other aspect of MHD (e.g., astrophysics). It has been some time since I last looked at it (having sold my copy after leaving academia many years ago), but I recall it requiring mostly just vector calculus background for much of it.

^{1. I have even referenced this book for answers here a couple times}