Electron Cyclotron interaction in the early stage of EC-assisted plasma breakdown

Electron Cyclotron(EC) wave interaction with very low temperature electrons in conditions like those occurring for EC-assisted plasma breakdown is investigated via the Hamiltoniana diabatic formalis. Estimates of interest for applications to present tokamak experiments are derived.The analysis allows ultimately to derive analytically the particle energy gain per single beam crossing and to characterize the dependency of the maximum possible energy variation as a function of the wave frequency ,harmonics and polarization and EC power and beam width.The investigation confirms that electron scan easily gain energies well above the ionization energy in most conditions, as observed in experiments.