Tokamak Plasma

The importance of tokamaks and their role in fusion reactors has been known for some time, but it is only now that plasma physicists have reached a clear understanding of the major principles governing the behaviour of confined high-temperature plasma. This book gives a timely and comprehensive survey of these concepts as well as a simple presentation of the basic physics involved. The topics discussed include: the theory of plasma equilibrium and its main instabilities, semi-empirical approaches for investigating heat transport, major plasma instabilities restricting the region of a tokamak's operating modes, a variety of plasma confinement regimes and other phenomena such as MARFE, magnetic bubbles and fishbones. The author proposes a new mechanism for anomalous heat transport connected with the idea of microscale "island" structure. The information is presented in a clear and systematic way which will make this book interesting and useful to a broad spectrum of scientists and engineers involved in fusion reactor research.