ICRF physics aspects of wall conditioning plasma characterization in TEXTOR

This paper focuses on encouraging results obtained on the characterization of RF produced plasmas during pulsed-mode wall conditioning discharges in ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) regime in the limiter tokamak TEXTOR. Recent Ion Cyclotron Wall Conditioning (ICWC) experiment carried out in TEXTOR tokamak, lead to the identification of various dependences of the antenna-plasma coupling efficiency on the plasma parameters for possible ICWC-discharge cleaning in ITER at half field. Our ICWC experiments emphasize on (i) study of antenna coupling during the mode conversion scenario, (ii) reproducible generation of ICRF plasmas for wall conditioning, by coupling RF power from one or two ICRF antennas and (iii) effect of application of an additional (along with toroidal magnetic field) stationary vertical (BV ≪ BT) or oscillating poloidal magnetic field (Bp ≪ BT) on antenna coupling and relevant plasma parameters.