Analysis of Dielectrc-Filled Waveguide Coupling to Plasmas in the ICRF

Dielectric-filled waveguides may be advantageous for heating reactor-grade tokamak plasmas, due to their compactness and power-handling capability. We present a theoretical analysis of coax excitation and plasma impedance for a dielectric-filled rectangular waveguide. The plasma reflection coefficient is obtained by matching plasma and waveguide fields at the interface. The numerical results show that the reflection coefficients can be made small by careful tailoring of the waveguide dimensions to the density profile for heating at the second or third harmonic of deuterium. We present a scattering matrix approach for the design of a coaxial feed to match the waveguide in the presence of a wide range of plasma loading. For a waveguide filled with a high permittivity dielectric, a shorted probe gives better coupling than an open-ended probe.