The tokamak is the principal tool in controlled fusion research. This book acts as an introduction to the subject and a basic reference for theory, definitions, equations, and experimental results. The fourth edition has been completely revised, describing their development of tokamaks to the point of producing significant fusion power.

The 12th Joint Workshop on Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (EC-12) was held in Aix-en-Provence (France) from May 13 to 16, 2002. This workshop was concerned with the interaction of electromagnetic waves and hot plasmas, a subject of great importance in the framework of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion. Using as a fuel a mixture of deuterium and tritium, which can be extracted from sea water, this is a very promising way to develop an intrinsically safe reactor. The workshop gathered approximately one hundred specialists in the production, use and theory of millimetre waves for heating and diagnostics of fusion plasmas.

These proceedings present the latest results in electron cyclotron emission, heating and current drive, with an emphasis on the physics and technology of Electron Cyclotron Emission, Electron Cyclotron Heating and Electron Cyclotron Current Drive applied to magnetic fusion research. The field is a key element in the development of fusion power and the ITER project now under construction.

The book deals with the propagation and absorption of high frequency waves in plasmas. The text collects in a structured and self-contained way the basic knowledge on the broad and varied behavior of plasma waves, adopting the microscopic kinetic description of the plasma as unifying principle. The internal coherence of the theory is explicitly stressed, and interesting physical phenomena peculiar to plasmas are discussed in detail, including collisionless damping of waves, the development of stochasticity in the interactions of charged particles with electromagnetic waves, and nonlinear interactions between waves. The most common and useful approximations used in solving practical problems are derived as special cases from the more general kinetic approach, thereby clarifying their meaning and domain of applicability. This exposition should be useful to plasma physicists both as an introduction and a reference to this field of research.