Application of modern optical fiber technology to the study of plasmas of closed divertors and pump limiters in reactor-relevant conditions

Abstract

Modern optical fibers, through control of the purity of the materials and the tolerances of the core and clad diameters, provide very good light transmission in the visible and near-ultraviolet regions of the spectrum. This makes it possible to use them in place of traditional optical systems without large losses in light intensity at the detectors. In addition, the same control of the quality of the fiber materials, coupled with novel jacket materials, makes it possible to use the fibers inside vacuum chambers and at elevated temperatures. A fiber-optic bundle recently installed in the TEXTOR tokamak is an example of the use of modern fiber technology. The bundle was made of 80 100-μm fibers held together with a polyimide organic material that has good outgassing specifications up to 400 °C. This fiber bundle has been used for recent measurements of the recycling in the throat region of one of the blades of the Advanced Limiter Test-II (ALT-II) belt pump limiter. Another system presently under design and testing employs individual fibers that are gold plated. These fibers are fed through holes in a vacuum blank flange and silver soldered to the flange. This system is designed to transmit the light from the strike point inside the closed divertor of the DIII-D tokamak out to a spectrometer. There, the spectral profile of the Hα line is analyzed to determine the energy distribution of the recycling particles.