Investigation of MHD Phenomena in NSTX using a Fast Soft X-Ray Imaging Camera
Authors: C.E. Bush, B.C. Stratton, J. Robinson, L.E. Zakharov, E. Fredrickson, D. Stutman, and K. Tritz
Date of PPPL Report: December 2006
Presented at: the Seventeenth ANS Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE 2006), 1–15 November 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Theory and experiments indicate that MHD phenomena can cause significant fast particle losses which in turn lead to heating power loss and elevated wall power loading in present experiments and possibly future burning plasma devices. It is important for STs, ITER, and ITPA database scaling to understand the dominant MHD modes and their effects on fast particles. We have studied the spatial structure and time behavior of the MHD in NSTX using a unique fast soft x-ray imaging camera with a wide-angle (pinhole) tangential view of nearly the entire plasma minor cross section. The camera provides a 64x64 pixel image, on a CCD chip, of light resulting from conversion of soft x-rays incident on a phosphor to the visible. Frame rates up to 500 kHz (300 frames/shot) are available.