P. Kornejew

Design of multichannel laser interferometry for W7-X

An eight channel interferometer is developed for density feedback control and the continuous measurement of electron density profiles in the stellarator W7-X. An additional sightline is launched in the geometry of the Thomson scattering for cross calibration. Due to the W7-X coil geometry access is strongly restricted. This motivates the optimization of the sightline geometry and design studies for supplementary chords. In-vessel retroreflectors will be used and inserted in the first wall elements. To cope with associated mechanical vibrations and thermal drifts during the discharges with envisaged duration of 30min either two-color or second harmonic interferometry techniques must be applied. Optimum wavelengths are found to be about 10 and 5μm. A CO2∕CO interferometer (10μm∕5μm) will be tested and compared with an existing CO2∕HeNe test interferometer. A special difficulty of remotely operated diagnostics is the need of long transmission lines with a path length of about 60m required from the diagnostic...

Bayesian experimental design of a multichannel interferometer for Wendelstein 7-X

Bayesian experimental design (BED) is a framework for the optimization of diagnostics basing on probability theory. In this work it is applied to the design of a multichannel interferometer at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator experiment. BED offers the possibility to compare diverse designs quantitatively, which will be shown for beam-line designs resulting from different plasma configurations. The applicability of this method is discussed with respect to its computational effort.

Diagnostic developments for quasicontinuous operation of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

The stellarator Wendelstein 7-X will allow for quasicontinuous operation with the duration only being limited to two 30 min discharges per day, at a continuous heating power of 10 MW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) at 140 GHz, by the capacity of the cooling water reservoir. This will result in high thermal loads on all plasma facing components of 50-100 kW/m(2) from radiation alone and of up to about 500 kW/m(2) on components additionally exposed to convective loads. In high density scenarios toroidally varying ECRH stray radiation levels of 50-200 kW/m(2) need to be coped with, requiring careful material selection and different shielding and hardening techniques. Furthermore, a gradual buildup of coatings on plasma facing optical components, which without any measures being taken, would lead to high transmission losses already within a few days of long pulse operation (equivalent to about 1 year of operation in pulsed devices like JET or ASDEX-upgrade) and therefore needs to be prevented as much as possible. In addition in situ cleaning as well as absolute calibration techniques need to be developed for all plasma facing optical systems. Here we report about some of our efforts to find, for various types of diagnostics, ways to cope with these adverse effects. Moreover, we give a few examples for individual diagnostic specific issues with respect to quasicontinuous operation, such as the development of a special integrator for the magnetic diagnostics as well as special interferometer types which can cope with unavoidable vibrations and slow path length changes due to, e.g., thermal expansion of the plasma vessel.

Admissible Crosstalk Limits in a Two Colour Interferometers for Plasma Density Diagnostics. A Reduction Algorithm

Mid Infrared (10,6 μm CO2 laser lines) interferometers as a plasma density diagnostic must use two-colour systems with superposed interferometers beams at different wavelengths in order to cope with mechanical vibrations and drifts. They require a highly precise phase difference measurement where all sources of error must be reduced. One of these is the cross-talk between the signals which creates nonlinear spurious periodic mixing products. The reason may be either optical or electrical crosstalk both resulting in similar perturbations of the measurement. In the TJII interferometer a post-processing algorithm is used to reduce the crosstalk in the data. This post-processing procedure is not appropriate for very long pulses, as it is the case for in new tokamak (ITER) or stellarator (W7-X) projects. In both cases an on-line reduction process is required or—even better—the unwanted signal components must be reduced in the system itself CO2 laser interferometers which as the second wavelength use the CO las...

Bayesian Design of Diagnostics: Case Studies for WENDELSTEIN 7-X

Abstract A general method for the design of diagnostics by means of Bayesian probability theory is outlined. Case studies are discussed for two diagnostics planned for Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X). First, line-of-sight optimization for interferometry meeting with physical optimization targets is investigated. The filter transmission bandwidth for Thomson scattering in W7-X is discussed as a second example.

Status of the diagnostics development for the first operation phase of the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X

An overview of the diagnostics which are essential for the first operational phase of Wendelstein 7-X and the set of diagnostics expected to be ready for operation at this time are presented. The ongoing investigations of how to cope with high levels of stray Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) radiation in the ultraviolet (UV)/visible/infrared (IR) optical diagnostics are described.

Development of Efficient FPGA-Based Multi-Channel Phase Meters for IR-Interferometers

Infrared (IR) interferometry is a method for measuring the line-electron density of fusion plasmas. The significant performance achieved by FPGAs in solving digital signal processing tasks advocates the use of this type of technology in two-color IR interferometers of modern stellarators, such as the TJ-II (Madrid, Spain) and the future W7-X (Greifswald, Germany). In this work the implementation of a line-average electron density measuring system in an FPGA device is described. Several optimizations for multichannel systems are detailed and test results from the TJ-II as well as from a W7-X prototype are presented.

Key results from the first plasma operation phase and outlook for future performance in Wendelstein 7-X

The first physics operation phase on the stellarator experiment Wendelstein 7-X was successfully completed in March 2016 after about 10 weeks of operation. Experiments in this phase were conducted with five graphite limiters as the primary plasma-facing components. Overall, the results were beyond the expectations published shortly before the start of operation [Sunn Pedersen et al., Nucl. Fusion 55, 126001 (2015)] both with respect to parameters reached and with respect to physics themes addressed. We report here on some of the most important plasma experiments that were conducted. The importance of electric fields on global confinement will be discussed, and the obtained results will be compared and contrasted with results from other devices, quantified in terms of the fusion triple product. Expected values for the triple product in future operation phases will also be described and put into a broader fusion perspective.

Continuous Phase Measurement in the W7-X Infrared Interferometer by Means of a FPGA and High-Speed ADCs

Abstract Interferometry is used for measuring line average electronic densities in fusion plasmas. The W7-X stellarator will employ a two-color CO2 (10.591 μm) and CO (5.295 μm) heterodyne-infrared interferometer as an electronic density measurement diagnostic. The frequency displacement is 40 MHz for the CO2 wavelength and 25 MHz for the CO, so these values will fix the heterodyne frequencies. Because the frequency gap between the two carriers is wide enough and the detector sensitivity is similar for both wavelengths, it is possible to use a single detector for the two signals; nevertheless, they should be split with filters. Traditionally, the intermediate-frequency signals should be filtered, downconverted to a lower frequency by the use of analog circuitry, and then processed. A new approach is proposed. The intermediate-frequency signals are directly sampled by means of high-speed analog-to-digital converters followed by a digital diplexer and a specific phase-meter processor implemented in a field-programmable gate array. Preliminary results from the W7-X infrared interferometer prototype, without plasma, are presented.

Performance analysis for an infrared second harmonics dispersion interferometer

A second harmonics or dispersion interferometer (DI) is a promising approach for the measurement of line-integrated densities on fusion devices. In contrast to a conventional twocolor interferometer, the second harmonics (SH) of an interferometer beam, generated by a non-linear optical crystal, is used as the second probing beam. Since a few years, non-linear crystals with a sufficient conversion rate are available for the infrared (IR) spectrum around 10 %m. Several types of these IR non-linear crystals have the phase-matching angle range as big as ≈1°, which is a great advantage for SH generation applications. Among other advantages, dispersion interferometers offer the possibility of a highly compact frameless design, which makes a modular approach possible for multi-channel diagnostics. Another unique feature is that vibrations are compensated intrinsically. This work will analyze the performance of a 10.6 %m DI currently under construction at the TEXTOR tokamak.