Suwon Cho

Department of Physics, Kyonggi University, Kyonggi-Do, 442-760, Korea
swcho@kuic.kyonggi.ac.kr

Wave equations are derived to compute the electromagnetic field and the power absorption in radially and axially inhomogenous helicon plasmas. The antenna current and field components are expanded in terms of azimuthal and axial harmonics as in the uniform plasma case. The axial inhomogeneity is treated by expanding the dielectric tenser in Fourier series for a given density profile, and the Maxwell equations are reduced to a set of ordinary differential equations with respect tot he radial coordinate. If the plasma is uniform in the axial direction, and axial mode is independent of others and the analytic solution for a uniform plasma can be used to find initial values of numerical integration in the case of a radially non-uniform plasma. When the axial inhomogeneity is present, however, coefficients of axial harmonics area coupled with each other and analytic boundary values of the filed components are no longer available. In this work, the derived differential equations are solved numerically by using the shooting method.