Lagrangians for plasmas in drift-fluid approximation

For drift waves and related instabilities conservation laws can play a crucial role. In an ideal theory these conservation laws are guaranteed when a Lagrangian can be found from which the equations for the various quantities result by Hamilton's principle. Such a Lagrangian for plasmas in drift-fluid approximation was obtained by a heuristic method in a recent paper by Pfirsch and Correa-Restrepo. In the present paper the same Lagrangian is derived from the exact multi-fluid Lagrangian via an iterative approximation procedure which resembles the standard method usually applied to the equations of motion. That method, however, does not guarantee all the conservation laws to hold. (orig.)