Development of 4.6 GHz lower hybrid current drive system for steady state and high performance plasma in EAST

In order to achieve steady state and high performance plasma in EAST, a new lower hybrid current drive system at a frequency of 4.6GHz has been built. The system is composed of 24 continuous wave (CW) klystron amplifiers to generate 6MW/CW microwave, 24 standard rectangle waveguide transmission lines with water-cooling plate, a multi-junction grill composed of 576 active (in groups of 8) and 84 passive sub-waveguides arranged in 12 rows and 6 columns, and four sets of high voltage power supplies. The power value and the spectrum of the launched microwave from the antenna can be controlled by the low-power microwave circuits in front of the klystrons. The new LHCD system has been applied to the experiments on EAST tokmak since 2014, and the obtained results suggest that it is effective to couple the wave into plasma and drive plasma current.