Interaction of High-Power waves with the plasma periphery of WEST & EAST tokamaks

This thesis aims at studying phenomena by which Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) induces interactions between the plasma and the walls of tokamaks, the plasma-metal interactions being deleterious not only to prevent vessel materials degradation but also not to affect plasma performance due to the presence of heavy metallic impurity compared to foreseen fuel (namely deuterium and tritium). This problematic basically affects any machine aiming at heating the ions with waves at the ion cyclotron frequency, which in particular will be the case of ITER. This thesis is the result of a collaboration between CEA Cadarache (France) and the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei (China). Various experimental work have been carried out on the EAST (China) and WEST (France) tokamaks in order to identify the relevant parameters allowing to optimize the efficiency by which the ICRF waves – used to heat the plasma – must be excited in order to maximize the amount of power coupled, while simultaneously minimizing the plasma interactions with the walls due to this type of waves and the so called radiofrequency sheath excitation.