Initial operation of the national spherical torus experiment fast tangential soft x-ray camera

Fast, two-dimensional, soft x-ray imaging is a powerful technique for the study of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in tokamak plasmas. We have constructed an ultra-fast frame rate soft x-ray camera for the national spherical torus experiment (NSTX). It is based on a recently developed 64x64 pixel charge-coupled device (CCD) camera capable of capturing 300 frames at up to 500 000 frames per second. A pinhole aperture images the plasma soft x-ray emission (0.2-10 keV) onto a P47 scintillator deposited on a fiber-optic faceplate; the scintillator visible light output is detected and amplified by a demagnifying image intensifier and lens-coupled to the CCD chip. A selection of beryllium foils provides discrimination of low-energy emission. The system is installed on NSTX with a wide-angle tangential view of the plasma. Initial plasma data and an assessment of the system performance are presented. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.