An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A system in which the → damping is great enough to prevent oscillation.

Aperiodic, from → a- + periodic; + → damping.

Same as the → Landau damping.

→ collision; → -less; → damping.

Of an oscillating system, the progressive decrease with time in the amplitude of the oscillation, due to friction (internal or external) or other resistance.

M.E. damp "black damp, a poison gas occurring in a mine," from Mid.Du. or Mid. Low German; akin to O.H.G. damph "vapor."

Mirâyi, noun from mirâ "getting extinguished, going out, expiring, dying," from mordan, present tense stem mir- "to die," Mid.Pers. murdan "to die," O.Pers. mrt- "to die," amriyta "dies," martiya- "(mortal) man" (Mod.Pers. mard "man"), Av. mərəta- "died," Skt. mar- "to die," mrti- "death;" PIE base *mor-/*mr- "to die." Cognates in other IE languages: Gk. emorten "died," ambrotos "immortal," L. morior "I die," mortuus "dead" (Fr. mourir "to die," mort "dead"), Arm. merani- "to die," O.C.S. mrutvu "dead," O.Ir. marb, Welsh marw "died," O.E. morþ "murder," Lith. mirtis "man."

The process wherein a → plasma gains energy at the expense of the → Langmuir wave. In the presence of the → Landau resonance, the particles in resonance moving slightly faster than the wave lose energy, while those moving slightly slower will gain energy. Since the Maxwellian distribution is decreasing with velocity, in a Maxwellian plasma, near the Landau resonance, there are more particles at lower velocities than at higher velocities. Also called collisionless damping.

Lev Landau (1908-1968), a prominent Soviet physicist, 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of → superfluidity; → damping.

The condition of a system in which the damping is so large that the system comes to a position of rest without oscillating.

→ over-; → damping.

Damping of a system which loses energy by → electromagnetic radiation.

→ radiation; → damping.

The smoothing of primordial → density fluctuations at high frequencies caused by photon → diffusion. Before the → decoupling era, photons and → baryons were tightly coupled to each other by → Compton scattering. However, the transition to a transparent → Universe was not instantaneous. As the → opacity of the Universe dropped, the photons started diffusing away from the positions they had while opaque, hence undergoing a → random walk. Since the → acoustic waves in the decoupling era were driven by photon pressure, the photon diffusion also led to damping of the → baryon acoustic oscillations. Silk damping suppresses all perturbations with masses smaller than about 10¹³ Msun. The implication for a theory of → structure formation is that individual galaxies must have formed in a → top-down structure formation mechanism, i.e. by the fragmentation of larger objects. However, in theories of structure formation which include → non-baryonic dark matter galaxies can form from smaller objects in a → bottom-up scenario.

Joseph Silk (1942-); → damping.

The behavior of a damped system when the amount of damping is weak so that the system oscillates with the amplitude gradually decreasing to zero. → overdamping.

→ under-; → damping.