Summary of the meeting on atomic processes in low temperature edge plasmas

During the past five years, the main theoretical efforts for tokamak edge plasmas have focused on the physics of detached regimes observed in divertor tokamaks [1-4] and divertor simulators [5-8]. These regimes have very low heat loads on plasma facing components and represent a solution to the problem of excessive heat loads. Although the plasma parameters and even the working gases are different, detached regimes in both tokamaks and linear simulators require strong neutral gas and/or impurity puffing and are characterized by the same major features: a low plasma temperature near the targets, a strong decrease of the plasma particle flux onto the plates (e.g., [9], Fig. 1), and a substantial plasma pressure drop along the magnetic field lines.