Aachen PK 2003 – scientific programme

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 10: Poster II

P 10.1: Poster

Tuesday, March 18, 2003, 17:30–19:15, Foyer

ECR heating of a linearly magnetized helicon plasma — •Jacob Zalach, Olaf Grulke, and Thomas Klinger — MPI for Plasma Physics, Greifswald Branch

Helicon plasma sources have attracted great attention during the last two decades due to the very efficient plasma production at moderate rf power. With only a few kW rf power plasma densities in the range of 10¹⁸−10¹⁹m⁻³ are easily achieved. Nevertheless, the electron temperatures in helicon plasmas are generally low in the range of several eV. The combination of high plasma density and low electron temperature leads to a highly collisional plasma, in which Coulomb collisions play a predominant role in dynamical plasma phenomena. In this poster the conceptional idea and design of an ECR system to be used as an additional secondary heating of a helicon plasma in the linearly magnetized VINETA device is presented. The system is based on electron heating by resonant absorption of an R-wave at the electron cyclotron frequency. Practically, a right-hand circularly polarized wave at 2.45GHz will be radiated along the ambient magnetic field in an axial magnetic field gradient. Beneath the design concept, calculations of the beam optics and the absorption properties will be presented.