Experimental analysis of the particle transport in the magnetized plasma column with an application to the helicon discharge

Abstract

Different transport mechanisms in a magnetized radio frequency plasma discharge in the IShTAR device are compared. The total cross field particle transport systematically shows the best agreement with the turbulent diffusion. Also, the ion mobility dominated transport could substantially contribute to radial losses. The relative role of parallel and perpendicular losses in the overall particle confinement is also compared. The total perpendicular particle losses are comparable or even larger than the parallel ones, imposing a practical limitation on achieving high density plasma simply combining several helicon antennae sequentially arranged along the glass tube. For the same reason, reducing the diameter of a source tube, in an attempt to achieve a higher plasma density, could be not very efficient when perpendicular particle loss is dominant.