Radio-frequency Heating of Plasmas

A reader who is at all acquainted with the large and rapidly growing literature on radiofrequency heating of plasmas will realise that a comprehensive survey of all the theory which has been developed, and the experiments which have been carried out, would require a very substantial volume. The aim of this book is to provide a readable introduction to radio frequency heating of Plasmas describing the physical mechanisms underlying each of the methods used in radiofrequency heating, together with some of the main experimental results. An introductory chapter provides a reminder of the basic ideas of wave propagation in plasmas, with which an intending reader is assumed to be familiar, and describes some of the techniques and ideas which are common to all of the heating schemes. The following chapters give more detailed accounts of heating in the various frequency ranges, while the final chapter discusses radiofrequency current drive. The ideas are presented in the context of tokamak heating, since it is on such devices that most work has been done.