Use of laser-ablated fast particle beams for the measurement of n e and T e profiles in the TEXTOR boundary layer

Abstract

We have developed a source of suprathermal atoms consisting of a laser system, which ablates small portions of coating materials from the rear side of a glass substrate. The coating can be either a single species or a multilayer of several-thousand-angstrom thickness. Neutral particle beams produced by this method can have energies in the range of about 10 eV and penetrate into the plasma up to line densities of about nel=1×1013 cm−2. For the determination of the electron temperature we have chosen two elements, the ionization and excitation cross sections of which differ in the range up to 100 eV. For TEXTOR a two-component target with a C-LiF coating is used, which delivers a Li and C beam with about 5- and 15-eV energy, respectively, ablated by a ruby laser with 1-J energy. The beam attenuation is determined from the emitted light by using a camera with a Si-diode array system for spatial recording. The different attenuations and emission characteristics then allow the determination of radial electron density and temperature profiles over the spatial range from the liner into a few centimeters beyond the limiter.