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Development of the B-Stark motional Stark effect diagnostic for measurements of the internal magnetic field in the DIII-D tokamak

Abstract

A new diagnostic, B-Stark, has been developed at the DIII- D tokamak for measurements of the magnitude and direction of the internal magnetic field. The B-Stark system is a version of a motional Stark effect (MSE) diagnostic based on the Stark split D/[alpha] emission from injected neutral beams. This diagnostic uses the spacing of the Stark lines to measure the magnitude of the magnetic field, and the intensities of the [pi]₃ and [sigma]₁ lines to measure the magnetic pitch angle. These lines originate from the same upper level, and are therefore not dependent on the n=3 level populations. The measurement of the magnetic pitch angle requires a specific viewing geometry with respect to the neutral beams, which is provided by the B-Stark diagnostic installation. The B-Stark technique may have advantages over MSE polarimetry diagnostics in future devices with high densities and temperatures, such as ITER. Under these conditions coatings on the plasma facing mirrors are expected, which can cause changes in the polarization state of the reflected light. The B-Stark technique is insensitive to the polarization direction, and can calibrate for polarization dependent transmission by using an in-situ beam-into-gas calibration. This dissertation describes the development and characterization of the B-Stark diagnostic. The hardware design and spectral fitting techniques are discussed in detail. Calibration procedures are described including the in-situ determination of the beam emission line profiles, viewing geometry and properties of the collection optics. The performance of the system is evaluated over the range of plasma conditions accessible at DIII-D. Measurements of the magnetic field have been made with toroidal fields in the range 1.2 - 2.1Tesla, plasma currents in the range 0.5 - 2.0MA, densities between 1.7 - 9.0 x 10¹⁹m⁻³, and neutral beam voltages between 50 - 81keV. These results are compared to values found from plasma equilibrium reconstructions (EFIT) and the MSE polarimetry system on DIII-D. The B-Stark system has been shown to provide measurements with a random errors as low as 0.2-0.3° in the magnetic pitch angle and 0.001-0.002T in [B]. Finally, proposed future improvements for the B-Stark diagnostic are presented

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