COUPLING OF SLOW WAVES NEAR THE LOWER HYBRID FREQUENCY IN JET

The physical properties of the JET lower hybrid antenna have been investigated numerically with a two-dimensional computer code based on the linear coupling theory. The antenna is made from an array of multijunction units which divide the incident power along the toroidal direction. The main properties of this new coupler are investigated and compared with those of the conventional grills generally used in previous lower hybrid experiments. In the light of this study, the general design of the multijunction antenna is presented; the importance of the geometrical parameters of the multijunction unit (e.g. choice of the location of the E-plane junctions, septum width between waveguides) is stressed. These parameters are optimized and their values are taken into account in launcher manufacturing. With such an optimization, the electric field enhancement in each secondary waveguide is minimized for an electron density at the launcher of about 1018 m−3, the power reflection coefficient is below 1.5% and the ‘n1-weighted antenna directivity’ is expected to lie between 60% and 70% in a large range of plasma densities around the optimum density. By using two shorted passive waveguides on each side of the antenna, the edge effects are reduced. The effect of the accessibility limit on coupling is also investigated. © 1990 IOP Publishing Ltd.