RF-PLASMA INTERACTIONS IN THE ANTENNA NEAR FIELDS

An assessment is made of the various linear and nonlinear mechanisms that are likely to play a role in the near-field of Faraday shielded inductive antennas commonly used in ICRF heating experiments. A number of low-level, but potentially important, RF loss mechanisms have been proposed as candidates to explain the observed surface phenomena and impurity production associated with ICRF. These range from edge heating via linear processes, such as surface wave or Bernstein wave generation to a variety of nonlinear phenomena including parametric decay and RF-driven sheath effects. The various proposed mechanisms will be examined in this work in terms of the available experimental data and an evaluation will be made of the scaling of these phenomena to higher density and temperature plasmas. © 1990.