ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Alfven instabilities in the collisional regime. The inertial perturbations are less sensitive to the degree of plasma collisionality than inertialess ones. Comparing the collisionless and collisional regimes, one can find what properties the perturbations in these regimes have in common. It is clear that the collisionless regime should first of all be compared with the weakly collisional regime. The analogy between properties of the inertialess perturbations in the collisionless and collisional plasma is re-established in the limit of infinitely large electron heat conductivity. The inertialess perturbations in a strongly collisional plasma have essentially different properties. The chapter shows that inertialess perturbations in a weakly collisional plasma are very similar to those in a collisionless plasma. However, there is no complete analogy between dissipative effects in a collisional plasma and kinetic resonant effects in a collisionless one.
