Detailed Modeling of Grounding Solutions for the ITER ICRF Antenna

The excitation of non‐TEM modes around the ITER ICRF antenna plug can considerably increase the level of RF voltages and currents on the ITER plug. First study of these modes and a solution to avoid them in the ITER ion cyclotron range of frequencies were reported in [1]. In this work a detailed analysis of electrical properties of the ITER ICRF antenna with the plug was studied for different grounding solutions with CST Microwave Studio® [2]. Conclusions of an earlier work [ 1 ] were confirmed on the detailed model of the antenna with the plug. Different grounding contacts (capacitive, galvanic and mixed capacitive‐galvanic) as well as their distribution inside the plug gap were analyzed. It was shown that capacitive and mixed capacitive‐galvanic grounding are less effective because they demand high values of the capacitance and are more sensitive to the frequency and antenna spectrum. In particular a galvanic grounding realized by the contacts put around the perimeter of the plug gap at lm behind the fr...