Advanced Plasma Diagnostics

Collective Thomson Scattering

For fusion energy research, millimeter-wave collective Thomson scattering (CTS) diagnostics for

Post doc. Soeren Krosholm at Risoe with the CTS receiver optics that will go into TEXTOR.

fast ion measurements are being developed in an international collaboration between MIT, Risø National Laboratory, Denmark, and two German laboratories. Dr. Paul Woskov of the Plasma Technology Division, heads the PSFC's efforts for this collaboration.

Energetic ions (alpha particles) are by-products of fusion burn in a D-T plasma. It is essential that these ions remain confined and give up their energy to heat the background plasma, thus sustaining the fusion burn. Consequently, the physics of high-energy ions produced by auxiliary heating and by fusion reactions must be understood and controlled in order to progress to a practical source of power. The CTS development will provide a needed diagnostic tool enabling this progress. Experiments will be carried out on the TEXTOR and ASDEX-Upgrade tokamaks in Germany, which have unique high power gyrotron facilities for providing the high-power millimeter-waves needed for this research.