Suppression of spurious mode oscillation in mega-watt 77-GHz gyrotron as a high quality probe beam source for the collective Thomson scattering in LHD

Collective Thomson scattering (CTS) diagnostic requires a strong probing beam to diagnose a bulk and fast ion distribution function in fusion plasmas. A mega-watt gyrotron for electron cyclotron resonance heating is used as a probing beam in the large helical device. Spurious mode oscillations are often observed during the turning on/off phase of the modulation. The frequency spectra of the 77-GHz gyrotron output power have been measured, and then one of the spurious modes, which interferes with the CTS receiver system, is identified as the TE17,6 mode at the frequency of 74.7 GHz. The mode competition calculation indicates that the increase of the magnetic field strength at the gyrotron resonator can avoid such a spurious mode and excite only the main TE18,6 mode. The spurious radiation at the 74.7 GHz is experimentally demonstrated to be suppressed in the stronger magnetic field than that optimized for the high-power operation.