Development of beam emission spectroscopy in the helically symmetric experiment stellarator

This study shows the feasibility of a beam emission spectroscopy (BES) diagnostic in the Helically Symmetric eXperiment (HSX) stellarator for obtaining the spatiotemporal structure of density fluctuation. A beam emission simulation was applied to HSX plasmas to design and optimize viewing chords and to estimate the beam emission spectrum. A Doppler-shifted beam emission spectrum was measured from a 30 kV, 4 A diagnostic neutral beam injected into HSX plasmas. The beam emission was measured with a high-time-resolution avalanche photodiode (APD) assembly to determine the feasibility of BES in HSX. For HSX plasmas heated by 28 GHz electron cyclotron heating, a mode around f = 15 kHz was observed in the BES signal. The coherence between the BES signal and the density fluctuation measured by an interferometer system was significant. A plan for improving the BES system to enable the measurement of higher frequency related to turbulent transport is presented. The array of sightlines proposed in this study can be used to measure beam emission with a Doppler shift larger than 3 nm (blue shift), which enables the use of a wide passband interference filter to obtain higher throughput. The adoption of a large objective optics and a chilled APD assembly will improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using BES diagnostic in the HSX stellarator to obtain the spatiotemporal structure of density fluctuation, by designing and optimizing viewing chords and estimating beam emission spectrum through simulation. Experimental results show that measuring beam emission in HSX plasmas using BES is feasible, with potential to improve system signal-to-noise ratio for higher frequency wave measurements.