Multichannel Microwave Interferometer for Simultaneous Measurement of Electron Density and its Fluctuation on HL-2A Tokamak**supported by the National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Science Program of China (Nos. 2013GB104002, 2013GB107002, 2014GB107001) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11475058, 11475057, 11261140326, 11405049)

Abstract

A multichannel microwave interferometer system has been developed on the HL-2A tokomak. Its working frequency is well designed to avoid the fringe jump effect. Taking the structure of HL-2A into account, its antennas are installed in the horizontal direction, i.e. one launcher in high field side (HFS) and four receivers in low field side (LFS). The fan-shaped measurement area covers those regions where the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) instabilities are active. The heterodyne technique contributes to its high temporal resolution (1 μs). It is possible for the multichannel system to realize simultaneous measurements of density and its fluctuation. The quadrature phase detection based on the zero-crossing method is introduced to density measurement. With this system, reliable line-averaged densities and density profiles are obtained. The location of the saturated internal kink mode can be figured out from the mode showing different intensities on four channels, and the result agrees well with that measured by electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI).