  The first kinetic study of transient growth for a collisionless homogeneous
Maxwellian plasma in a uniform magnetic field is presented. A system which is
linearly stable may display transient growth if the linear operator describing
its evolution is non-normal, so that its eigenvectors are non-orthogonal. In
order to include plasma kinetic effects a Landau fluid model is employed. The
linear operator of the model is shown to be non-normal and the results suggest
that the nonnormality of a collisionless plasma is intrinsically related to its
kinetic nature, with the transient growth being more accentuated for smaller
scales and higher plasma beta. The results based on linear spectral theory have
been confirmed with nonlinear simulations.
