Contributions to High-Temperature Plasma Physics

Contains review articles and papers on high-temperature physics and related areas, which reveal the state-of-the-art in the field. The contributions show how scientists approach the complex nature of a fusion plasma.

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This volume is dedicated to Professor G.H. Wolf, director of the Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany and professor at the Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf, on the occassion of his 60th birthday in November 1993. About 40 experts working in the areas of high-temperature plasma physics and neighbouring fields have contributed review articles on current achievements in fusion-related research or original papers in their rapidly advancing fields. A fusion plasma is a very complicated many-body system consisting of a huge number of interacting particles of different species, exhibiting collective nonlinear behaviour in non-trivial geometry and magnetic field configurations, and being operated under nonstationary conditions with complicated boundaries. To understand the complex nature of a fusion plasma requires scientific input from practically all areas of physics and engineering. The contributions to this volume show how scientists approach this complex problem, and that for the past decades the fusion community can look back on significant progress.
It is understood that only a synergetic treatment of basic science, material properties, conceptual design, machine-orientated fusion research, diagnostics and engineering will lead to the one ultimate goal of high-temperature plasma physics: the ecologically acceptable and economically favourable fusion reactor. This volume shows how theoretical investigations and experimental tests supplement each other. Introductions to basic concepts and methods are included.