Prediction of plasma-facing ICRH antenna behavior via a finite-element solution of coupled integral equations

The demand for a predictive tool to help designing ICRH antennas for fusion experiments has driven the development of codes like ICANT, RANT3D, and the early developments and further upgrades of TOPICA code. Currently, TOPICA handles the actual geometry of ICRH antennas (with their housing, etc.) as well as a realistic plasma model, including density and temperature profiles and FLR effects. Both goals have been attained by formally splitting the problem into two parts: the vacuum region around the antenna, and the plasma region inside the toroidal chamber. Field continuity and boundary conditions allow writing a set of coupled integral equations for the unknown equivalent (current) sources; finite elements are used on a triangular-cell mesh and a linear system is obtained on application of the weighted-residual solution scheme. In the vacuum region calculations are done in the spatial domain, whereas in the plasma region a spectral (wavenumber) representation of fields and currents is adopted, thus allowing a description of the plasma by a surface impedance matrix. Thanks to this approach, any plasma model can be used in principle, and at present Brambilla's FELICE code has been employed. The natural outputs of TOPICA are the induced currents on the conductors and the electric field in front of the plasma, whence the antenna circuit parameters (impedance/scattering matrices), the radiated power and the fields (at locations other than the chamber aperture) are then obtained. An accurate model of the feeding coaxial lines is also included. This paper is precisely devoted to the description of TOPICA, whereas examples of results for real-life antennas are reported in a companion paper [1] in this proceedings. ©2005 American Institute of Physics