Clarke D. A First Course in Magnetohydrodynamics 2025

Textbook in PDF format

This text introduces readers to magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), the physics of ionised fluids. Traditionally MHD is taught as part of a graduate curriculum in plasma physics. By contrast, this text - one of a very few - teaches MHD exclusively from a fluid dynamics perspective, making it uniquely accessible to senior undergraduate students. Part I of the text uses the MHD Riemann problem as a focus to introduce the fundamentals of MHD: Alfvén's theorem; waves; shocks; rarefaction fans; etc. Part II builds upon this with presentations of broader areas of MHD: fluid instabilities; viscid hydrodynamics; steady-state MHD; and non-ideal MHD. Throughout the text, more than 125 problems and several projects (with solutions available to instructors) reinforce the main ideas. Optionally, large-font lesson plans for a 'flipped-style' class are also available to instructors. This book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, requiring no previous knowledge of fluid dynamics or plasma physics