Kinetic theory of plasma waves

In the present paper a very brief introduction is pro-vided to the theory of kinetic waves relevant to the de-scription of wave heating in fusion machines and fo-cussing mostly on radio frequency or ion cyclotron res-onance frequency waves in tokamaks. The text starts by sketching the basic philosophy underlying the stan-dardly adopted methods, describing the interaction of a single particle with a given wave and the assumptions typically made to arrive at a trustworthy description of the energy exchange, and ends by discussing some of the subtleties of the modeling of wave-particle interaction in inhomogeneous magnetized plasmas. None of the top-ics will be treated in full detail. Hence, by no means, this text is meant to be all-inclusive. Rather, it aims at providing a framework that should allow understanding what are the difficulties involved, leaving out the de-tailed derivation of the expressions as well as subtleties such as relativistic corrections. The interested reader is referred to the provided references - and the references given therein - for more in depth information.