Effect of 3 T magnetic field on RF plasma sputtering in an ITER-relevant first mirror unit

The first mirror (FM) cleaning operations in ITER are expected to be executed in the presence of a similar to 3 T magnetic field. In the RF plasma cleaning configuration, this would have a significant influence on the plasma properties, ion energy, angle of incidence as well as flux spatial distribution. To this end, RF discharges were excited in an ITER-sized mock-up of a first mirror unit (FMU) consisting of a powered first mirror M1 and a grounded second mirror M2 placed in a homogeneous 3 T magnetic field. The plasma discharge was confined in a beam extending in the direction of the magnetic field, consequently wetting a limited portion of the FMU walls. In the DC-decoupled scheme (without lambda/4 filter), this considerably influenced the self-bias voltage V-DC that develops on M1. Changing the angle a between M1 normal and magnetic field, modified the plasma wetted wall area As and the resulting V-DC varied by over two orders of magnitude. Plasma exposure experiments were also done in the DC-coupled scheme (with lambda/4 filter), wherein the angle and wetted surface determined the area of wall sputtered. Increasing alpha led to an increase in the sputtered wall area Ag, and consequently the wall deposition on grounded M2. However, in all the cases M1 was entirely clean with the exception of edge deposits in some. In contrast, both M1 and M2 are coated with wall deposits in the absence of a magnetic field and a similar plasma exposure. The results show that plasma cleaning with lambda/4 filter in a 3 T magnetic field at ITER could potentially prevent the parasitic wall deposition on FMs. The results also highlight the importance of FM orientation in the magnetic field and the wetted area in the plasma cleaning in both the DC-coupled and decoupled schemes within the ITER diagnostic systems.