A tutorial presentation of the two stream instability and Landau damping

A tutorial presentation is given of the interaction between a high frequency electrostatic wave and a plasma. The analysis is carried out in several consecutive simple steps, starting from electrostatic plasma waves in a cold plasma and successively introducing complications like streaming electrons, the two stream instability and eventually the Landau damping phenomenon. The analysis is based only on cold plasma fluid theory and does not involve kinetic Vlasov theory. (C) 2001 American Association of Physics Teachers.