RF Stabilization of Interchange Modes in HANBIT Mirror Plasmas Hogun Jhang, S. S. Kim, S. G. Lee, J. G. Bak, and B. H. Park Korea Basic Science Institute, Daejeon, Korea It has been known that radio frequency (RF) waves have influence on interchange modes in mirror plasmas by either ponderomotive force[1-2] and/or RF- plasma wave coupling (sideband wave coupling) mechanism[3]. In the present work, we report experimental observation for the stabilization of interchange modes in HANBIT mirror plasmas by sideband wave coupling mechanism. HANBIT device is a magnetic mirror machine, consisting of a central cell, a yin- yang coil type anchor, a plug cell, a fan-out tank and a cusp tank. In the experiments presented here, the anchor coil current is turned off to eliminate the influence on interchange modes from the anchor field. Then, the interchange mode stability depends only on RF characteristics. Fig. 1. Schematic of HANBIT device and location of probe arrys. Two fixed edge probe arrys, array 1 and array 4 (4 probes azimuthally 90 0 separated) are used to measure the charicteristics of density fluctuation (800 Ksa/s), and a fast injection probe is used for the measurement of density profile. The RF characteristics are measured by four magnetic probes with 10 Msa/s sampling rate. Probe array 1 Probe Array 4 FIP FAN Anchor Central Cell Plug Cusp 30th EPS Conference on Contr. Fusion and Plasma Phys., St. Petersburg, 7-11 July 2003 ECA Vol. 27A, P-2.195