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      ABSTRACT
       
        Quasi charge neutrality        is one of the most elementary concepts in plasma physics that is discussed
        early in many introductory plasma physics textbooks based on the physics
        of Debye shielding and plasma oscillations. However, when nonlinear effects
        are considered, electrostatic structures in steady state with spatial
        scales larger than the Debye length can exist in a plasma. In fact, electrostatic
        structures have been observed in many regions of space plasmas, including
        the solar wind, the magnetosphere, the auroral acceleration region, and
        in association with shocks, turbulence, and magnetic reconnection. In
        this talk, I will introduce one possible theoretical description of some
        of these structures --- Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) modes, which are
        exact nonlinear solutions of the Vlasov-Poisson system of equations in
        collisionless kinetic theory. In particular, I will present recent Particle-in-Cell
        (PIC) simulations of 2D BGK mode solutions in finite magnetic field found
        analytically a few years ago [Ng, Bhattacharjee, and Skiff, Phys. Plasmas
        13, 055903 (2006)] to study their stability. 
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