Stability of Vlasov equilibria. Part 1. General theory

We present a general formulation for treating the linear stability of inhomogeneous plasmas for which at least one species is described by the Vlasov equation. Use of Poisson bracket notation and expansion of the perturbation distribution function in terms of eigenfunctions of the unperturbed Liouville operator leads to a concise representation of the stability problem in terms of a symmetric dispersion functional. A dispersion matrix is derived which characterizes the solutions of the linearized initial-value problem. The dispersion matrix is then expressed in terms of a dynamic spectral matrix which characterizes the properties of the unperturbed orbits, in so far as they are relevant to the linear stability of the system.