The school will cover basic theoretical and computational aspects of astrophysical fluids and plasmas. The topics of the lectures are detailed in the preliminary program outlined below, which furthermore includes complementary exercise tutorials. The general layout will consist of lectures in the morning, and hands-on exercises in the afternoon. The first lecture is mostly theoretical in nature, while the second lecture in the morning connects with a specific physical application. The students will apply the concepts they learned in the morning session using two state-of-the-art open source numerical codes during the exercises. This approach will achieve the dual goal of familiarizing the students with the theory while giving them valuable hands-on experience with state-of-the-art computational astrophysics codes.

The three application areas covered, (i) protoplanetary disks, (ii) interstellar medium (ISM), and (iii) galaxy evolution/feedback, are all connected and part of the same multi-scale star-gas life-cycle, and therefore relevant for students coming from all three fields. In order to model and understand the evolution of galaxies, a detailed understanding of the ISM and star formation is needed. To model the life-cycle of the ISM, we have to place it in the larger context of the galactic disk, and energy injection is in large parts due to feedback from the massive stars. Finally, star formation and protoplanetary disks are the “end product” of gravitational collapse in the dense molecular cloud cores. The mass distribution of pre-stellar cores, and their connection to the filamentary web of gas and dust in the molecular clouds, is determined by the nature of turbulence in the ISM. The interstellar environment therefore supplies the initial and boundary conditions for protoplanetary disks.

In all three fields, a rich set of microphysics, including coupling between gas and dust and the feedback of stars on larger scales, play an important role in shaping the evolution. The aim of this school is to emphasize this connection and cover, in particular, subjects such as: - The connection between continuum dynamics and the Vlasov-Boltzmann equation - Multi-fluid dynamics of weakly-coupled plasmas - Gas-dust coupling of dusty fluids - The role of waves, shocks and instabilities