Abstract :
This Special Issue is an outgrowth ofthe IEEE mini-course "RF Heating and Current Drive in Magnetic Fusion Plasmas" which was held May 25-27, 1983, following the 1983 IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science, in San Diego, CA. The papers are expanded versions of the lectures delivered by the authors at the mini-course. Not all the lectures were submitted as papers for this issue. The papers in this issue, however, cover important aspects of all frequency regimes-from the lowest, Alfven wave frequencies, to the highest, electron cyclotron frequencies-in which there are currently intensive research activities in heating of magnetically confined plasmas for fusion energy generation. In the following we shall attempt to give an overview of this very active field of plasma electrodynamics research and put the contributions to this issue in perspective. For readers not actively engaged in this field we shall first give a brief orientation with references to reviews and most recently published conference proceedings where the up-to-date results are usually reported.
