There has been an increase in interest worldwide in fusion research over the last decade and a half due to the recognition that a large number of new, environmentally attractive, sustainable energy sources will be needed to meet ever increasing demand for electrical energy. Based on a series of course notes from graduate courses in plasma physics and fusion energy at MIT, the text begins with an overview of world energy needs, current methods of energy generation, and the potential role that fusion may play in the future. It covers energy issues such as the production of fusion power, power balance, the design of a simple fusion reactor and the basic plasma physics issues faced by the developers of fusion power. This book is suitable for graduate students and researchers working in applied physics and nuclear engineering. A large number of problems accumulated over two decades of teaching are included to aid understanding.

The science of magnetically confined plasmas covers the entire spectrum of physics from classical and relativistic electrodynamics to quantum mechanics. During the last sixty years of research, our initial primitive understanding of plasma physics has made impressive progress thanks to a variety of experiments — from tabletop devices with plasma temperatures of a few thousands of degrees and confinement times of less than 100 microseconds, to large tokamaks with plasma temperatures of up to five hundred million degrees and confinement times approaching one second. We discovered that plasma confinement is impaired by a variety of instabilities leading to turbulent processes with scales ranging from the plasma size to a few millimeters. Understanding these phenomena, which have slowed down progress towards a fusion reactor, requires the use of very sophisticated diagnostic tools, many of which employ electromagnetic waves.The primary objective of this book is to discuss the fundamental physics upon which the application of electromagnetic waves to the study of magnetically confined plasmas is based.