  Van Kampen modes are eigen-modes of Jeans-Vlasov equation. Their spectrum
consists of continuous and, possibly, discrete parts. Onset of a discrete van
Kampen mode means emergence of a coherent mode without any Landau damping;
thus, even a tiny couple-bunch wake is sufficient to drive instability.
Longitudinal instabilities observed at Tevatron, RHIC and SPS can be explained
as loss of Landau damping (LLD), which is shown here to happen at fairly low
impedances. For repulsive wakes and single-harmonic RF, LLD is found to be
extremely sensitive to steepness of the bunch distribution function at small
amplitudes. Based on that, a method of beam stabilization is suggested.
