Soft x-ray tangential imaging of the NSTX core plasma by means of an MPGD pinhole camera

D. Pacella*, M. Leigheb, R. Bellazzini, A. Brez, M. Finkenthal, D. Stutman, R. Kaita, S. A. Sabbagh

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

A fast x-ray system based on a micro pattern gas detector has been used for the first time, to investigate emission from the plasma core of the National Spherical Tokamak experiment (NSTX), at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The results presented in this work demonstrate the capability of such a device to measure with a time resolution of the order of 1 ms, the curvature and the elongation of the x-ray iso-emissivity contours, under various plasma conditions. Also, comparisons with the magnetic surface structure calculated by the EFIT code show good agreement between reconstructed flux surface and the soft x-ray (SXR) emissions for poloidal beta values up to 0.6. For greater values of beta, x-ray iso-emissivity contours become circular, while magnetic flux surface reconstructions yield elongation 1.5 < k < 2.2. The x-ray images have been acquired with a (statistical) signal to noise ratio (SNR) per pixel of about 30. Thanks to the direct and efficient x-ray conversion and its operation in a photon counting mode, this new diagnostic tool allows the routine investigation of the plasma core with a sampling rate of 1 kHz and extremely high SNR under all experimental conditions in NSTX.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1075-1085
Number of pages11
JournalPlasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Volume46
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2004

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