Proceeding of A3 foresight program seminar on critical physics issues specific to steady state sustainment of high-performance plasmas 2017

A3 foresight program is a joint project on plasma physics research under the auspice of JSPS (Japan), NRF (Korea) and NSFC (China) to enhance closer collaborations among scientists in three countries. Its main purpose is to solve several key physics issues specific to steady state high performance plasmas through joint experiments on three Asian advanced fully superconducting fusion devices (EAST in China, LHD in Japan, KSTAR in Korea) and other magnetic confinement devices to carry out multi-faceted and complementary physics researches. As a major activity of this A3 program, the academic workshop is held in Korea, Japan, and China in turn. Since the first coordinator meeting at Jeju Island, Korea in 2012, eleven workshops have been held with four in Japan, four in Korea and three in China. A3 program has become an important platform for scientists of three countries to report and discuss the latest progress and achievement in steady-state sustainment of high-performance plasma. As the last workshop of this A3 program, the 12th workshop is proposed to summarize the fruitful achievements obtained within the framework of the A3 program, optimize ongoing researches, and plan on the future collaborations. This 12th A3 Foresight Program Workshop was held in Chongqing, China. The topics include current drive and profile control, transport of edge and divertor plasmas, stability of edge plasma, interaction between energetic particle and bulk plasma, and experimental and theoretical study in other relative fields. This issue is the collection of 38 papers at the entitled meeting. All the papers are indexed individually. (J.P.N.)