Control and acquisition for MAST Thomson scattering diagnostics

The MAST (mega-amp spherical tokamak) Thomson scattering (TS) diagnostics have been radically upgraded and expanded. Eight 30 Hz 1.6 J Nd:YAG lasers have been combined to produce a sampling rate of 240 Hz. The scattered signals are acquired by two spectrometer systems: core and edge. The core system has been built anew: collection optics, polychromators, digitizers, and control computers. It allows measurement of electron temperature and density at 130 spatial points with ∼10 mm resolution across the plasma.The Nd:YAG scattered light signals are registered in 650 channels as polychromator outputs; each channel is registered on two ADCs: at 1 GHz rate in a short interval around each laser pulse and at 100 kHz for background data. The fast ADCs are combined in 26 data acquisition units. Each unit is assembled in a 6 U PXI chassis with embedded controller and six 4-channel 1 GHz ADC cards. Some chassis contain a 96-channel slow ADC card with Ethernet control.The Ruby TS has been rebuilt with a new spectrometer and CCD camera to provide higher spatial resolution - 512 points; the laser has been modified to add double pulse capability.A new control and acquisition system has been developed; it has modular design allowing flexibility and seamless expansion. The system supports event-triggered and real-time operation (will be added in a later stage).A smart trigger device has been developed for TS timing and synchronisation. It provides complex pulse sequences for laser firing with resynchronisation on a number of digital and analogue inputs including plasma events. This device also triggers TS acquisition.The system is integrated by a TS master process running on the dedicated computer; it is represented as a standard MAST data acquisition unit. The Ruby TS is also implemented as a standard MAST unit linked with the Nd:YAG TS by MAST system services.     

Optimization of optical filters for ITER edge Thomson scattering diagnostics

In the ITER edge Thomson scattering measurement system, polychromators with optical band-pass filters and avalanche photodiodes are planned to be used. In this paper, we optimized the transmission wavelength ranges of the optical filters by a numerical method. Since measurements in a high electron temperature range are required for the measurement system, the Thomson spectrum could overlap a strong line emission of D_α when the electron temperature is rather high. It is shown that a filter whose transmission wavelength range is shorter than D_α becomes important to decrease the measurement error in the high temperature range. Moreover, it is found that a filter whose transmission wavelength range is above 1064 nm (laser wavelength) is useful to improve the measurement accuracy, in particular, when the number of filters is more than six.     

CO2 laser collective Thomson scattering diagnostics on the HT-7 tokamak

A CW CO2 laser collective Thomson scattering diagnostics was developed to measure plasma density fluctuations on the HT-7 tokamak. The design and construction of CO2 laser scattering apparatus is described. The laser source is a continuous-wave CO2 laser with a cavity length of 1.9 m and a power output of about 10 W at 10.6 μm. The k-resolution of the system is △k ≈ 3.2 cm^-1. The preliminary data from the diagnostic is presented.     

Personnel protection during the operation of Thomson scattering laser system on COMPASS tokamak

A recently installed Thomson scattering diagnostic on COMPASS tokamak uses two high power lasers. The presented protection system ensures laser safety of the personnel. Protection covers three areas–laser laboratory, spectrometer laboratory and tokamak hall. Laser protection system inputs are controlling the covering of the laser beam path, the entrance doors, the beam shutters and the laser cooling. Six regimes are defined for the protection system, covering all operation of the laser system, including laser service and low power beam alignment. Hardware implementation of the protection is based on PLC. The system is controlled via PCs with a touch screen. Connection to the COMPASS personnel protection system is described.     

Design and development of five-channel interference filter polychromator for SST-1 Thomson scattering system

Five-channel interference filter polychromator is designed and fabricated for measuring electron temperature and density from Thomson scattered spectrum of SST-1 tokamak plasma. The instrument is designed for measuring electron temperature in the range of 20 eV-3 keV and electron density of 10¹⁸-10¹⁹ m⁻³. Optical ray tracing software, Zemax is used for simulating and optimizing the optical design. Each polychromator is a stand-alone unit with field programmable gate array (FPGA) based controller unit for easy operation, monitoring of the temperature variation of the instrument and communicating to a central personal computer (PC). The control unit also protects the avalanche photo diode (APD) detectors from damage due to high current flow, sets the slow channel gain and switches on the biasing power supply. Characteristics of the present polychromator design are relatively high signal throughput and variable bandwidth selection of filters combined with a stable, low cost and relatively simple configuration. Filter selection, arrangement order of filters, statistical error analysis, mechanical and optical design and estimation of electron temperature and density are discussed in this article. The fabricated filter polychromator is tested for its image quality, optical alignment, and integrated performance.     

汤姆逊X射线源激光系统的定时与同步诊断

清华汤姆逊X射线源中,束流动力学性能和对撞时间要求光阴极微波电子枪的触发激光脉冲与加速相位精确同步.本文分别介绍了超快紫外激光系统设计与实现、光阴极微波电子枪定时系统设计,以及同步系统的亚皮秒抖动测量.用高次谐波相位检波器法测量相位噪声功率谱密度可以获得精确的激光-射频相对均方根时间抖动,实验测定为小于200fs[1Hz,100kHz].     

汤姆逊散射初步实验设计

基于汤姆逊散射的X射线源具有一些现有X射线源所不具备的优点，因而具有广泛的应用前景。我们将利用现有的16MeV返波型行波加速器与纳秒激光器进行汤姆逊散射初步实验。本文给出了即将进行的该初步实验的理论计算及整体方案，并对在实验中可能出现的问题的解决方案进行了讨论。     

Characterization of heat transport dynamics in laser-produced plasmas using collective Thomson scattering: Simulation and proposed experiment

We propose an experiment in which the collective Thomson scattering lineshape obtained from ion acoustic waves is used to infer the spatial structure of local heat transport parameters and collisionality in a laser-produced plasma. The peak-height asymmetry in the ion acoustic wave spectrum will be used in conjunction with a recently developed model describing the effects of collisional and Landau damping contributions on the low-frequency electron density fluctuation spectrum to extract the relative electron drift velocity. This drift arises from temperature gradients in the plasma. The local heat flux, which is proportional to the drift, can then be estimated, and the electron thermal conductivity will be inferred from the relationship between the calculated heat flux and the experimentally determined temperature gradient. Damping of the entropy wave component at zero mode frequency is shown to be an estimate of the ion thermal conductivity, and its visibility is a direct measure of the ion-ion mean free path. We also propose to measure thermal transport parameters under dynamic conditions in which the plasma is heated impulsively by a laser beam on a fast (50 ps) time scale. This technique will enable us to study heat transport in the presence of the large temperature gradients that are generated by this local heating mechanism. Deviations of the inferred local thermal conductivity from its Spitzer-Härm value can be used to study the transition to a nonlocal heat transport regime. We have constructed a simple numerical model of this proposed experiment and present the results of a simulation.This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Sandia National Laboratories under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000 and by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract W-7405-ENG-48.     

Iterative noise removal from temperature and density profiles in the TJ-II Thomson scattering

TJ-II Thomson Scattering diagnostic provides temperature and density profiles of plasma. The CCD camera acquires images that are corrupted with some kind of noise called stray-light. This noise degrades both image contrast and measurement accuracy, which could produce unreliable profiles of the diagnostic. So far, several approaches have been applied in order to decrease the noise in the TJ-II Thomson scattering images. Since the presence of the noise is not global but located in some particular regions of the image, advanced processing techniques are needed. However such methods require of manual fine-tuning of parameters to reach a good performance. In this contribution, an iterative image processing approach is applied in order to reduce the stray light effects in the images of the TJ-II Thomson scattering diagnostic. The proposed solution describes how the noise can be iteratively reduced in the images when a key parameter is automatically adjusted during the iterative process.     

Upgrade of plasma density feedback control systemin HT-7 tokamak

The HT-7 is a superconducting tokamak in China used to make researches on the controlled nuclear fusion as a national project for the fusion research. The plasma density feedback control subsystem is the one of the subsystems of the distributed control system in HT-7 tokamak (HT7DCS). The main function of the subsystem is to control the plasma density on real-time. For this reason, the real-time capability and good stability are the most significant factors, which will influence the control results. Since the former plasma density feedback control system (FPDFCS) based on Windows operation system could not fulfill such requirements well, a new subsystem has to be developed. The paper describes the upgrade of the plasma density feedback control system (UPDFCS), based on the dual operation system (Windows and Linux), in detail.     

Design of Amplifier Circuit for the HT-7 Tokamak Thomson Scattering System

Thomson scattering diagnostic is important for measuring electron temperature and density profiles. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, a silicon avalanche photodiode （APD） with high quantum efficiency, high sensitivity, and high gain up to 100 was adopted to measure the Thomson scattering spectrum. A preamplifier, which has low noise, high bandwidth, and high sensitivity, was designed with suitable transimpedance. Using AD8367 as the post-amplifier, good performance of the APD readout electronics have been obtained. A discussion is presented on the performance of the amplifier using a laser diode to simulate the Thomson scattering light. The test results indicate that the designed circuit has a high amplifying factor and fast rising edge. So reduction of the integral gate of the CAMAC ADC converter can improve the signal-to-noise ratio.     

The timing system on the J-TEXT tokamak

This paper describes the timing system designed to control the operation time-sequence and to generate clocks for various sub-systems on J-TEXT tokamak. The J-TEXT timing system is organized as a distributed system which is connected by a tree-structured optical fiber network. It can generate delayed triggers and gate signals (0 μs–4000 s), while providing reference clocks for other sub-systems. Besides, it provides event handling and timestamping functions. It is integrated into the J-TEXT Control, Data Access and Communication (J-TEXT CODAC) system, and it can be monitored and configured by Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). The configuration of this system including tree-structured network is managed in XML files by dedicated management software. This system has already been deployed on J-TEXT tokamak and it is serving J-TEXT in daily experiments.     

Analysis and Performance of the Thomson Scattering Diagnostics on HT-7 Tokamak Based on I-EMCCD

A visible light imaging Thomson scattering （VIS-TVTS） diagnostic system has been developed for the measurement of plasma electron temperature on the HT-7 tokamak. The system contains a Nd：YAG laser （A = 532 nm, repetition rate 10 Hz, total pulse duration ≈ 10 ns, pulse energy 〉 1.0 J）, a grating spectrometer, an image intensifier （I.I.） lens coupled with an electron multiplying CCD （EMCCD） and a data acquisition and analysis system. In this paper, the measurement capability of the system is analyzed. In addition to the performance of the system, the capability of measuring plasma electron temperature has been proved. The profile of electron temperature is presented with a spatial resolution of about 0.96 cm （seven points） near the center of the plasma.     

Data Processing and Acquisition System for the HT-7 Multipulse Thomson Scattering Diagnostic

This article describes the data processing and acquisition system for the HT-7 multipulse Thomson scattering diagnostic. An eight-pulse laser is used in the Thomson scattering system to obtain electron temperature profiles at eight different times throughout an entire plasma discharge. The major components of the diagnostic system consist of a multipulse iNd-glass laser,a photodetector‘‘s subsystem, a calibration set and a CAMAC data processing and acquisition system. The data processing software along with LeCroy 2250L will perform the data acquisition.In order to simplify the operation and extend the capability of its compatibility with other math softwares, the processing software has been improved by the authors. The new software based on the VC easily utilizes some math softwares to calculate the electron temperature. The new software is simpler and more operational than the old one.     

HL-2A激光汤姆逊散射实验方案

简要描述了激光汤姆逊散射测量等离子体电子温度的基本原理,较详细阐述了用于HL-2A装置等离子体电子温度时空分布测量的汤姆逊散射系统(TLSS)的设计构思和发展规划。     

Design of FPGA based high-speed data acquisition and real-time data processing system on J-TEXT tokamak

Tokamak experiment requires high-speed data acquisition and processing systems. In traditional data acquisition system, the sampling rate, channel numbers and processing speed are limited by bus throughput and CPU speed. This paper presents a data acquisition and processing system based on FPGA. The data can be processed in real-time before it is passed to the CPU. It provides processing ability for more channels with higher sampling rates than the traditional data acquisition system while ensuring deterministic real-time performance. A working prototype is developed for the newly built polarimeter–interferometer diagnostic system on the Joint Texas Experimental Tokamak (J-TEXT). It provides 16 channels with 120 MHz maximum sampling rate and 16 bit resolution. The onboard FPGA is able to calculate the plasma electron density and Faraday rotation angel. A RAID 5 storage device is adopted providing 700 MB/s read–write speed to buffer the data to the hard disk continuously for better performance.     

Design and realization of the J-TEXT tokamak central control system

The Joint Texas Experimental Tokamak (J-TEXT), a medium-sized conventional tokamak, serves as a user experimental facility in the China-USA fusion research community. Development of a flexible and easy-to-use J-TEXT central control system (CCS) is of supreme importance for users to coordinate the experimental scenarios with full integration into the discharge operation. This paper describes in detail the structure and functions of the J-TEXT CCS system as well as the performance in practical implementation. Results obtained from both commissioning and routine operations show that the J-TEXT CCS system can offer a satisfactory and effective control that is reliable and stable. The J-TEXT tokamak achieved high-quality performance in its first-ever experimental campaign with this CCS system.     

Update on the ASDEX Upgrade data acquisition and data management environment

It has been a while since it had been reported on the status of ASDEX Upgrade data acquisition (DAQ) and data management environment. An update on changes, expansions, and enhancements applied in the last years will be given.

• The acquired amount of data per shot increased from 4 GiB to 40 GiB in eight years.
• Network, storage, and archive challenges have been managed by stepwise improvements.
• New DAQ techniques have been introduced to replace outdated technologies.
• Real-time diagnostics speed-up data provisioning and contribute to feedback control.

Information technology applied to ASDEX Upgrade is under permanent change. Recent and future steps are outlined.     

基于FPGA的CCD驱动模块设计

本文针对天文观测项目中导星的需求,使用全帧型的CCD探测器KAF-3200,完成了导星CCD相机的驱动模块设计。在介绍CCD芯片KAF-3200的基础上,通过使用FPGA和超低噪声的LDO实现了CCD芯片的时序电路和偏压电路,并通过示波器、ADC采样等方法对该设计进行了多次测试。测试表明该设计有着高速、低噪声、低功耗的优点,满足设计需求,并且为CCD的驱动设计提供了一种新的思路。     

Tests of the cryogenic target for lithium and hydrogen isotopes extraction from the chamber of T-11M tokamak without its venting

T-11M lithium program is focused on a solution of technological issues of a steady-state tokamak with liquid lithium plasma facing components (PFC). Lithium, collected by the chamber wall of such tokamak is able to capture a considerable amount of tritium, which is unacceptable. In order to restrict the level of lithium deposited on the chamber wall and captured tritium it was suggested early to use a cryogenic target technique. Such target placed in the plasma of glow discharge (GDH, He or Ar) during the tokamak conditioning can play the role of collector of lithium and tritium atoms which were sputtered by GD bombardment of the wall. The collected lithium and tritium can be evacuated mechanically together with target from tokamak chamber through vacuum lock without venting. Cryogenic target, cooled by liquid nitrogen (LN), was installed in the T-11M and tested in different modes of wall conditioning and tokamak operations. The maximum speed of the lithium collection during GDH was 3.5 mg/h, that corresponds “to contamination” of wall by lithium during approximately 200 regular shots of T-11M which are equivalent to two-week regular operations. It was established that considerable part of lithium was collected in ionized state. On this basis it can be suggested the creation in tokamak chamber an equivalent ionic pump for extraction both lithium and tritium from chamber without venting during regular tokamak operation.