Evolution of Heavy Ion Beam Probing from the Origins to Study of Symmetric Structures in Fusion Plasmas

First measurements of an imaging heavy ion beam probe at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

The imaging heavy ion beam probe (i-HIBP) diagnostic has been successfully commissioned at ASDEX Upgrade. The i-HIBP injects a primary neutral beam into the plasma, where it is ionized, leading to a fan of secondary (charged) beams. These are deflected by the magnetic field of the tokamak and collected by a scintillator detector, generating a strike-line light pattern that encodes information on the density, electrostatic potential, and magnetic field of the plasma edge. The first measurements have been made, demonstrating the proof-of-principle of this diagnostic technique. A primary beam of 85/87Rb has been used with energies ranging between 60 and 72 keV and extracted currents up to 1.5 mA. The first signals have been obtained in experiments covering a wide range of parameter spaces, with plasma currents (Ip) between 0.2 and 0.8 MA and on-axis toroidal magnetic field (Bt) between 1.9 and 2.7 T. Low densities appear to be critical for the performance of the diagnostic, as signals are typically observed only when the line integrated density is below 2.0-3.0 × 1019 m-2 in the central interferometer chord, depending on the plasma shape. The strike line moves as expected when Ip is ramped, indicating that current measurements are possible. Additionally, clear dynamics in the intensity of the strike line are often observed, which might be linked to changes in the edge profile structure. However, the signal-to-background ratio of the signals is hampered by stray light, and the image guide degradation is due to neutron irradiation. Finally, simulations have been carried out to investigate the sensitivity of the expected signals to plasma density and temperature. The results are in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations, suggesting that the diagnostic is almost insensitive to fluctuations in the temperature profile, while the signal level is highly determined by the density profile due to the beam attenuation.

Heavy Ion Beam Probing Diagnostics on the TUMAN-3M Tokamak for Study Plasma Potential and Electric Fields in New Operational Regimes

Heavy Ion Beam Probing (HIBP) diagnostic is a powerful tool for electric field studies in the hot dense plasma of modern-day toroidal magnetic confinement devices. On the TUMAN-3M tokamak, the HIBP have been used in regimes with improved plasma confinement to clear up the role of the radial electric field in the transition to good confinement regimes. Recently, a modernization of the TUMAN-3M HIBP diagnostics was performed, aiming to reconfigure it for a work with a reversed plasma current direction and improvement of the overall stability of the diagnostic. The results of the first measurements of the plasma potential in the co-NBI scenario are reported and discussed.

New Approach to Cross-Correlation Reflectometry Diagnostics of Nonlocality of Plasma Turbulence

One of the most important properties of stochastic nonlinear processes, including the turbulence of the hydrodynamic motion of continuous media, is distant spatial correlations. To describe them, an approach was proposed by Shlesinger and colleagues based on a linear integro-differential equation with a slowly decaying kernel, which corresponds to superdiffusion (nonlocal) transfer in the regime of Lévy walks (Lévy flights when the finite velocity of the carriers is taken into account). In this paper, we formulate a similar approach that makes it possible to formulate the problem of determining these properties from the scattering spectra of electromagnetic (EM) waves and cross-correlation reflectometry. A universal description of the relationship between the observed symmetric quasi-coherent component in the spectrum of scattered EM waves in plasmas and a process of the Mandelstam–Brillouin scattering type is obtained. It is shown that the nonlocality of spatial correlations of density fluctuations in a turbulent medium is due to long-free-path carriers of the medium’s perturbations, for which the free path distribution function is described by the Lévy distribution. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by the example of the interpretation of the data of cross-correlation reflectometry of EM waves in the radio-frequency range for the diagnosis of turbulent plasma in magnetic confinement devices for axisymmetric toroidal thermonuclear plasma.