8th IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on H-mode and Transport Barrier Physics

This special issue of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion contains invited and contributed papers presented to the 8th IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on H-mode and Transport Barrier Physics. The meeting took place in Toki from 5--7 September 2001, and was organized by the National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan. This was the eighth meeting of a series (San Diego 1987, Gut Ising 1989, Abingdon 1991, Naka 1993, Princeton 1995, Kloster Seeon 1997, Oxford 1999). In the eighth meeting in Toki, the topics were expanded to the general physics in the transport of toroidal plasmas including tokamak and helical plasmas. The programme of the meeting covered H-mode and transport barrier physics in axisymmetric (tokamak) and non-axisymmetric (helical) magnetic field configurations. The aim of this meeting was to extract the general physics elements on H-mode and transport barriers from various experimental observations and theoretical results by comparing the characteristics of transport in different configurations of magnetic field. The topics selected for the workshop were:Summary of critical issue and current state of transport barrier researchComparison of transport barriers in axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric devicesSpatial structure of transport barriers (internal and edge)Dynamics of transport barrier formation and destruction (internal and edge)Energy and particle transport in plasmas with transport barriersTheory and simulation of transport barriersSix invited papers were presented in sessions devoted to the topics above and 77 contributed papers on the topics were presented in poster sessions. The choice of topics and the abstract selection were carried out by the Scientific Programme Committee. The members of the Scientific Programme Committee were:K Ida (Chair NIFS, Japan)M Greenwald (MIT, USA)R Groebner (GA, USA)Y Hamada (NIFS, Japan)S Lebedev (Ioffe, Russia)G Saibene (EFDA, Germany)E Synakowski (PPPL, USA)T Takizuka (JAERI, Japan)R Wolf (IPP, Germany)I would like to thank U Schneider (IAEA Scientific Secretary) for her competent and timely guidance in the organization of the workshop.Katsumi IdaGuest Editor