30th EPS Conference on Controlled Fusion and Plasma Physics

The 30th EPS Conference on Controlled Fusion and Plasma Physics took place in St Petersburg, Russian Federation, on 7th--11th July2003. It was jointly organized by the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, the St Petersburg State Polytechnical University and Technical University Applied Physics Ltd, on behalf of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS). The members of the local organizing committee were drawn from these institutions:B Kuteev, Chair, Polytechnical UniversityS Lebedev, Vice-Chair, Ioffe InstituteA Lebedev, Scientific Secretary, Ioffe InstituteV Bakharev, TUAP LtdV Grigor'yants, Ioffe InstituteV Sergeev, Polytechnical UniversityN Zhubr, Ioffe InstituteOver the years, the annual conference of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society has widened its scope. Contributions to the present conference covered widely diversified fields of plasma physics, ranging from magnetic and inertial fusion to low temperature plasmas. Plasma sizes under investigation ranged from tiny to astronomical. The topics covered during the conference were distributed over the following categories: tokamaks, stellarators, high intensity laser produced plasmas and inertial confinement, alternative magnetic confinement, plasma edge physics, plasma heating and current drive, diagnostics, basic plasma physics, astrophysical and geophysical plasmas and low temperature plasmas.The scientific programme and paper selection were the responsibility of the Programme Committee appointed by the Board of the EPS Plasma Physics Division. The committee was composed of:R Koch, Chairman, ERM/KMS Brussels, BelgiumE Ascasibar, CIEMAT Madrid, SpainS Atzeni, Università di Roma, ItalyG Bonhomme, LPMI Nancy, FranceC Chiuderi, Università di Firenze, ItalyB Kuteev, St Petersburg State Polytechnical,University, Russian FederationM Mauel, Contact person APS-DPP, Columbia University New York, USAR A Pitts, EPFL/CRPP Lausanne, SwitzerlandR Salomaa, Helsinki University, FinlandB Sharkov, ITEP Moscow, Russian FederationV Smirnov, Kurchatov Institute Moscow, Russian FederationW Suttrop, IPP Garching, GermanyC Varandas, IST Lisbon, PortugalF Wagner, Chair EPS-PPD, IPP Greifswald, GermanyH R Wilson, UKAEA Abingdon, UKThis committee selected 30 invited talks, in which the speakers were asked to address the general audience of plasma physicists and to exert their didactic skills. Out of the contributed papers, in total, 92 oral presentations were selected and distributed over parallel topical sessions. The other contributed papers (743) were presented as posters. The conference was attended by more than 700 participants from 41 countries. A major event during the conference was the award of the Hannes Alfv\'en Prize to Professor V E Fortov who gave a spectacular lecture on non-ideal plasmas. The associated paper is included in this special issue.Following the tradition of this conference series, four-page summaries of the contributed papers are published as the Europhysics Conference Abstracts series, volume 27A. The publication is in the form of a CD-ROM sent free of charge to all participants and is also accessible via the website: http://www.ioffe.ru/EPS2003/.This special issue of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion contains papers of the invited talks at this conference. These papers have been assessed according to the standards of the journal and examined by referees selected from or by the members of the International Programme Committee.We are proud to provide, in this special issue, an overview of the forefront research in all major fields of plasma physics, through a set of papers accessible to the general audience of plasma physicists. The selection of this set of papers has been the work of the Programme Committee, and we would like to express our gratitude to all of its members for this successful selection. We are grateful to all authors for their efforts in providing high quality papers combining didactic introductions and accurate reports on recent developments in their field, a combination not always easy to realize. We would also like to thank all authors and referees for doing their work in due time, despite occasional short notice. Finally, we would also like to thank Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion for the continuing support of this conference series.