Study of impurities in the Tandem Mirror Experiment using extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopy

Abstract

Impurities in the Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX) have been studied using extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy. Three time-resolving absolutely-calibrated normal-incidence monochromators, one on each section of TMX, were used to study the impurity emissions in the wavelength range of 300 A to 1600 A. The instruments on the east end cell and central cell were each capable of obtaining spatially-resolved profiles from 22 chords of the plasma simultaneously while the instrument on the west end cell monitored the central chord. The impurities identified in TMX were carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and titanium. Emphasis was placed upon determining the impurity densities and radiated power losses of the central cell; results indicate that the impurity concentrations were low - less than 0.4% for each species - and that less than 10% of the total net trapped neutral beam power was lost to radiation. The use of titanium gettering on the central cell walls was observed to decrease the brightnesses of singly- and doubly-ionized carbon and oxygen in the central cell plasma. In the end cells, oxygen was the main impurity with a concentration of about 1.5% and was injected by the neutral beams; the other impurities had concentrations of about 0.5%. Radiation losses from themore » end cells were negligible.« less