Neutral atom analyzers for diagnosing hot plasmas: A review of research at the ioffe physicotechnical institute

Abstract

Research on neutral particle diagnostics of thermonuclear plasmas that has been carried out in recent years at the Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia) is reviewed. Work on the creation and improvement of neutral atom analyzers was done in two directions: for potential applications (in particular, on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which is now under construction at Cadarache in France) and for investigation of the ion plasma component in various devices (in particular, in the largest tokamaks, such as JET, TFTR, and JT-60). Neutral atom analyzers are the main tool for studying the behavior of hydrogen ions and isotopes in magnetic confinement systems. They make it possible to determine energy spectra, to perform the isotope analysis of atom fluxes from the plasma, to measure the absolute intensity of the fluxes, and to record how these parameters vary with time. A comparative description of the analyzers developed in recent years at the Ioffe Institute is given. These are ACORD-12/24 analyzers for recording 0.2–100-keV hydrogen and deuterium atoms with a tunable range of simultaneously measured energies, CNPA compact analyzers for a fixed energy gain in the ranges 80–1000 eV and 0.8–100 keV, an ISEP analyzer for simultaneously recording the atoms of all the three hydrogen isotopes (H, D, and T) in the energy range 5–700 keV, and GEMMA analyzers for recording atom fluxes of hydrogen and helium isotopes in the range 0.1–4 MeV. The scintillating detectors of the ISEP and GEMMA analyzers have a lowered sensitivity to neutrons and thus can operate without additional shielding in neutron fields of up to 109 n/(cm2 s). These two types of analyzers, intended to operate under deuterium-tritium plasma conditions, are prototypes of atom analyzers created at the Ioffe Institute for use in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. With these analyzers, a number of new results have been obtained in recent years in various devices. Some results are presented from investigation of ions in the Globus-M spherical tokamak, the W7-AS stellarator, and the JET tokamak by means of the analyzers developed at the Ioffe Institute. Challenges and opportunities for applying these diagnostics in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project are discussed.