Use of additional helium puffing for the diagnostics of plasma parameters at the FT-2 tokamak

Abstract

The experiments carried out at the FT-2 tokamak in which additional pulsed puffing of helium into the hydrogen plasma was used for diagnostic purposes are considered. To estimate the necessary content of helium ions in the experiments on studying short-scale plasma oscillations, the ionization-recombination balance was simulated numerically under the assumption of a toroidally homogeneous influx of the working gas onto the boundary of the plasma column. In these simulations, the effective density of the neutral gas incident on the plasma boundary was determined by the iteration method, which made it possible to provide agreement between the obtained solution and the experimental discharge conditions. In particular, the correspondence of the determined admixture content to both the plasma quasineutrality condition and the value of the effective charge Zeff, as well as agreement between the calculated and measured plasma density profiles, was ensured. The simulations were performed under the assumption of anomalous diffusion coefficients for all plasma components. The temporal variations of the ionization-recombination balance were checked by comparing them with the measured spectra of radiation in the HeI, HeII, and Hα lines. In the current drive experiments, variations in ne(r) at the discharge periphery were examined by the method based on the proportionality of the intensity ratio of the helium spectral lines, HeI(668 nm)/HeI(728 nm), to the plasma density. In these calculations, the factors relating the intensity ratio of these lines to the plasma density were taken from the literature on spectral diagnostics.