2021•Chinese Physics BOpen access
Plasma–wave interaction in helicon plasmas near the lower hybrid frequency
Yide Zhao, Jinwei Bai, Yong Cao, Siyu Wu, Eduardo Ahedo, Mario Merino, Bin Tian
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Abstract
We study the characteristics of plasma–wave interaction in helicon plasmas near the lower hybrid frequency. The (0D) dispersion relation is derived to analyze the properties of the wave propagation and a 1D cylindrical plasma–wave interaction model is established to investigate the power deposition and to implement the parametric analysis. It is concluded that the lower hybrid resonance is the main mechanism of the power deposition in helicon plasmas when the RF frequency is near the lower hybrid frequency and the power deposition mainly concentrates on a very thin layer near the boundary. Therefore, it causes that the plasma resistance has a large local peak near the lower hybrid frequency and the variation of the plasma density and the parallel wavenumber lead to the frequency shifting of the local peaks. It is found that the magnetic field is still proportional to the plasma density for the local maximum plasma resistance and the slope changes due to the transition.