Note: measurement of the runaway electrons in the J-TEXT tokamak

The runaway electrons have been measured by hard x-ray detectors and soft x-ray array in the J-TEXT tokamak. The hard x-ray radiations in the energy ranges of 0.5-5 MeV are measured by two NaI detectors. The flux of lost runaway electrons can be obtained routinely. The soft x-ray array diagnostics are used to monitor the runaway beam generated in disruptions since the soft x-ray is dominated by the interaction between runaway electrons and metallic impurities inside the plasma. With the aid of soft x-ray array, runaway electron beam has been detected directly during the formation of runaway current plateau following the disruptions.     

Energetic ion loss detector on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak

A scintillator-based energetic ion loss detector has been successfully commissioned on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. This probe is located just below the outer midplane, where it captures ions of energies up to 2 MeV resulting from ion cyclotron resonance heating. After passing through a collimating aperture, ions impact different regions of the scintillator according to their gyroradius (energy) and pitch angle. The probe geometry and installation location are determined based on modeling of expected lost ions. The resulting probe is compact and resembles a standard plasma facing tile. Four separate fiber optic cables view different regions of the scintillator to provide phase space resolution. Evolving loss levels are measured during ion cyclotron resonance heating, including variation dependent upon individual antennae.     

Vacuum photodiode detector array for broadband UV detection in a tokamak plasma

An array of vacuum photodiode detectors has been used to monitor discharge equilibrium, stability, and cleanliness in the Macrotor tokamak. These detectors use the photoelectric effect on small tungsten plates to measure UV emission in the band lambda approximately 200-1200 angstroms, and so are sensitive mainly to impurity line radiation in Macrotor. The response of this system to controlled impurity contamination experiments and to disruptions is described. The design, construction, and background problems associated with these detectors are discussed in detail.     

New scintillation detector of backscattered electrons for the low voltage SEM

The new scintillation detector of backscattered electrons that is capable of working at primary beam energy as low as 0.5 keV is introduced. Low energy backscattered electrons are accelerated in order to generate a sufficient number of photons. Secondary electrons are deflected back by the energy filter so that the true compositional contrast of the specimen is obtained. The theoretical models of the detector function are described and first demonstration images are presented.     

A magnetically driven reciprocating probe for tokamak scrape-off layer measurements

A new in situ reciprocating probe system has been developed to provide scrape-off layer measurements in the Tore Supra tokamak. The probe motion is provided by the rotation of an energized coil in the tokamak magnetic field. Simple analytic approximations to the exact numerical model were used to identify the important parameters that govern the dynamics of the system, and optimize the coil geometry, the electrical circuit, and the stiffness of the retaining spring. The linear speed of the probe is directly proportional to the current induced by the coil's rotation; its integral gives the coil position, providing a means to implement real-time feedback control of the probe motion. Two probes were recently mounted on a movable outboard antenna protection limiter in Tore Supra and provided automatic measurements during the 2011 experimental campaign.     

Deuterium velocity and temperature measurements on the DIII-D tokamak

Newly installed diagnostic capabilities on the DIII-D tokamak [J. L. Luxon, Nucl. Fusion 46, 6114 (2002)] enable the measurement of main ion (deuterium) velocity and temperature by charge exchange recombination spectroscopy. The uncertainty in atomic physics corrections for determining the velocity is overcome by exploiting the geometrical dependence of the apparent velocity on the viewing angle with respect to the neutral beam.     

A method for measuring the detector response function for monochromatic electrons based on Compton scattering

A method for calibrating the energy scale of a scintillation detector using γ rays has been proposed and implemented. The technique is based on Compton scattering in the scintillation detector, followed by photoelectric absorption of a scattered γ-ray photon in a Ge detector. The novelty of the method consists in placing the γ-ray source and the scintillation and Ge detectors tightly to each other. The method is efficient for detectors with a low-Z material for which the ratio of the cross sections for Compton scattering and photoeffect is great in value and the attenuation length of the γ-ray flux is comparable to the detector dimensions. The described technique can be used to precisely investigate the dependence of the light yield in a scintillator on the electron energy.     

A compact gridless channel plate detector for time-of-flight measurements

A compact channel plate detector used as a start detector in heavy ion reaction studies is described. In order to avoid spurious structures in the energy spectra of the detected ions the usual electron accelerating grid is replaced by five electrodes which provide a uniform electric field. The start detector has an intrinsic resolution of 85 ps and efficiency of 90% for medium mass nuclei. The overall time resolution with a solid state detector as stop is 105 ps.     

Fusion neutron detector for time-of-flight measurements in z-pinch and plasma focus experiments

We have developed and tested sensitive neutron detectors for neutron time-of-flight measurements in z-pinch and plasma focus experiments with neutron emission times in tens of nanoseconds and with neutron yields between 10(6) and 10(12) per one shot. The neutron detectors are composed of a BC-408 fast plastic scintillator and Hamamatsu H1949-51 photomultiplier tube (PMT). During the calibration procedure, a PMT delay was determined for various operating voltages. The temporal resolution of the neutron detector was measured for the most commonly used PMT voltage of 1.4 kV. At the PF-1000 plasma focus, a novel method of the acquisition of a pulse height distribution has been used. This pulse height analysis enabled to determine the single neutron sensitivity for various neutron energies and to calibrate the neutron detector for absolute neutron yields at about 2.45 MeV.     

Low-noise, high-speed detector development for optical turbulence fluctuation measurements for NSTX

A new beam emission spectroscopy (BES) diagnostic is under development. Photon-noise limited measurements of neutral beam emissions are achieved using photoconductive photodiodes with a novel frequency-compensated broadband preamplifier. The new BES system includes a next-generation preamplifier and upgraded optical coupling system. Notable features of the design are surface-mount components, minimized stray capacitance, a wide angular acceptance photodiode, a differential output line driver, reduced input capacitance, doubling of the frequency range, net reduced electronic noise, and elimination of the need for a cryogenic cooling system. The irreducible photon noise dominates the noise up to 800 kHz for a typical input power of 60 nW. This new assembly is being integrated into an upgraded multichannel optical detector assembly for a new BES system on the NSTX experiment.     

Processing of the signals from the liquid-xenon calorimeter of the CMD-3 detector for timing measurements

Detecting near-threshold nucleon production reactions is one of the tasks that must be performed by the CMD-3 cryogenic magnetic detector operating at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics. Events of neutron-antineutron pair production, followed by antineutron annihilation, are detected by the detector calorimeters. The energy range differing by ∼25 MeV from the nucleon-producing threshold is the most interesting region for studying such events. At energies such as these, antineutrons annihilate in a cylindrical liquid-xenon calorimeter ≥5 ns after the beams collide. For reliable identification of these events, it is necessary that the flight time of these particles to the calorimeter be determined with an accuracy of 3 ns or better. The calorimeter is composed of a set of ionization chambers with the anode and cathode readout. The time of charge collection from the anode cells is 4.5 μs. Therefore, for the instant when a signal appears in the calorimeter to be determined with a required accuracy, a special signal processing method has been developed, with which it is possible to measure the arrival time of the calorimeter signals with the required accuracy in the real time mode. The prototype of the developed measuring channel has been tested. The test results basically satisfy the requirements: for the arriving signal equivalent to the deposited energy of 200 MeV, the measured time resolution is 3.1 ns, which is close to the calculated value of 2.9 ns.     

Initial resolution measurements of an improved magnetic-electrostatic detector objective lens for LVSEM

In this paper we present some initial resolution measurements of an improved magnetic-electrostatic detector objective lens for a low-voltage scanning electron microscope. The electron optical design of the lens was already proposed by the authors [G. Knell, E. Plies, Nucl. Instr. & Meth. A 427 (1999) 99]. The magnetic circuit of this lens has a radially arranged pole-piece gap. Thus, the specimen is immersed in a strong magnetic field of 106 mT (working distance: 1 mm, primary electron energy: 200 eV). The electrostatic field strength of our optimized lens variant amounts to a moderate value of 100 V/mm for a working distance of 1 mm. At a final beam energy of 1 keV a resolution of 3 nm, at 260 eV a resolution of 5 nm was obtained.     

Determination of radial location of rotating magnetic islands by use of poloidal soft x-ray detector arrays in the STOR-M tokamak

A technique is presented for determining the radial location of the rotating magnetic islands in the STOR-M tokamak by use of soft x-ray (SXR) detector arrays. The location is determined by examining the difference in the integrated SXR emission intensities through two adjacent lines of sight. A model for calculating dependence of the line integrated SXR emission intensity on the radius, the mode numbers and the magnetic island geometry, has been developed. The SXR difference signal shows phase inversion when the impact parameter of the line of sight sweeps across the magnetic islands. Experimentally, the difference SXR signals significantly reduce noise and suppress the influence of background plasma fluctuations through common mode rejection when a dominant mode exists in the STOR-M tokamak. The radial locations of the m = 2 magnetic islands have been determined under several experimental conditions in the STOR-M discharges. With the decrease in the tokamak discharge current and thus the increase of the safety factor at the edge, the radial location of the m = 2 magnetic islands has been found to move radially inward.     

A gated liquid-scintillator-based neutron detector for fast-ignitor experiments and down-scattered neutron measurements

The detection of neutrons in fast-ignitor experiments or down-scattered neutrons in inertial fusion experiments is very challenging since it requires the neutron detection system to recover within 10-100 ns from a high background orders of magnitude stronger than the signal of interest. The background is either the hard x-ray emission from short-pulse laser target interactions for the fast-ignitor experiments or the primary neutron signal for the down-scattered neutrons. A liquid-scintillator detector has been developed using a gated photomultiplier that suppresses the background signal and eliminates the afterglow present in conventional plastic scintillators.     

Mass filter and focusing ion detector for use with time-of-flight velocity distribution measurements

A novel mass filter and focusing ion detector for time-of-flight studies of dissociative ionization fragments is described. The filter-dector combination is particularly suited for measuring the kinetic energy released in the molecular dissociation process. The mass filter utilizes a computer-controlled, time-dependent retarding potential synchronized with, and located a distance L from, a pulsed electron-bombardment ion source. Ions arriving at the filter at time t have a kinetic energy of mL(2)/2t(2). The retarding potential varies with time as mL(2)/2et(2), thus deflecting ions with masses less than m. Operation of the filter in a mode which provides unity mass resolution at 16 amu has been demonstrated. The detector consists of a channel electron multiplier and a focusing electrode configuration approximating that of a charged sphere above a grounded conducting plane. The planar input aperture of the detector is located just behind the mass filter along the ion flight path. The detector features high efficiency, large input aperture, low background, and simple operation. Ion transit times through the detector are small and essentially independent of the initial ion kinetic energy.