Alena Křivská

Progress in controlling ICRF-edge interactions in ASDEX upgrade

RF measurements during variation of the strap voltage balance of the original 2-strap ICRF antenna in ASDEX Upgrade at constant power are consistent with electromagnetic calculations by HFSS and TOPICA, more so for the latter. RF image current compensation is observed at the antenna limiters in the experiment at a local strap voltage of about half of the value of the remote strap, albeit with a non-negligible uncertainty in phasing. The RF-specific tungsten (W) source at the broad-limiter 2-strap antenna correlates strongly with the RF voltage at the local strap at the locations not connected to opposite side of the antenna along magnetic field lines. The trends of the observed increase of the RF loading with injection of local gas are well described by a combined EMC3-Eirene – FELICE calculations, with the most efficient improvement confirmed for the outer-midplane valves, but underestimated by about 1/3. The corresponding deuterium density tailoring is also likely responsible for the decrease of local W sources observed in the experiment.

Circuit model of the ITER-like antenna for JET and simulation of its control algorithms

The ITER-like Antenna (ILA) for JET [1] is a 2 toroidal by 2 poloidal array of Resonant Double Loops (RDL) featuring in-vessel matching capacitors feeding RF current straps in conjugate-T manner, a low impedance quarter-wave impedance transformer, a service stub allowing hydraulic actuator and water cooling services to reach the aforementioned capacitors and a 2nd stage phase-shifter-stub matching circuit allowing to correct/choose the conjugate-T working impedance. Toroidally adjacent RDLs are fed from a 3dB hybrid splitter. It has been operated at 33, 42 and 47MHz on plasma (2008-2009) while it presently estimated frequency range is from 29 to 49MHz.At the time of the design (2001-2004) as well as the experiments the circuit models of the ILA were quite basic. The ILA front face and strap array Topica model was relatively crude and failed to correctly represent the poloidal central septum, Faraday Screen attachment as well as the segmented antenna central septum limiter. The ILA matching capacitors, T-j...

Radio-frequency sheath voltages and slow wave electric field spatial structure

We investigate theoretically how sheath radio-frequency (RF) oscillations relate to the spatial structure of the RF parallel electric field emitted by Ion Cyclotron (IC) wave launchers, using a simple model of Slow Wave (SW) evanescence coupled with Direct Current (DC) plasma biasing via sheath boundary conditions in a plasma-filled 2-dimensional (parallel, radial) rectangle. Within a “wide sheaths” asymptotic regime, valid for large-amplitude near RF fields, our model becomes partly linear: the sheath oscillating voltage at open field line boundaries is a linear combination of elementary contributions by every source point of the radiated RF field map. These individual contributions are all the more intense as the SW emission point is toroidally nearer to the sheath walls. A limit formula is given for a source infinitely close to the sheaths. The decay of sheath RF voltages with the sheath/source parallel distance is quantified as a function of two characteristic SW evanescence lengths. Decay lengths are...