ABSTRACT
A plasma is a system of interacting free electrons and ionized atoms or molecules, which exhibit collective behavior due to long-range Coulomb forces whose dependence upon the distance r goes as 1/r2. However, not all media containing charged particles can be classified as plasmas. There are certain criteria that must be fulfilled to be called a plasma. Before we delve ourselves more into plasmas, let us look into the brief history of plasmas. The word plasma originates from the Greek language and means “something molded.” It was applied for the first time by Tonks and Langmuir in 1929 to describe the inner region of a glowing gas produced by electric discharge in a tube, while the ionized gas as a whole remains electrically neutral.
