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For high-temperature tokamaks like ITER, electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements are expected to be affected by many factors like relativistic downshift, harmonics overlap, polarization scra...

The ITER Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic is progressing towards its Preliminary Design Review (PDR). In parallel, the diagnostic integration in the Equatorial Port is ongoing. Port Integration has to address the structural integrity to withstand various loads, maintenance and the safety aspects of ECE diagnostic. The ITER ECE system includes radial and oblique lines-of-sight. Recently, a successful peer-review of the in-port plug Hot Calibration Source has taken place and its performance and integration feasibility has been demonstrated. Four 45-meter long low-loss transmission lines are designed to transmit mm-wave power in the frequency range of 70- 1000 GHz in both X- and O-mode polarization from the port plug to the ECE instrumentation room in the diagnostic building. Prototype transmission lines are being tested [1]. A prototype polarizing Martin-Puplett type Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) operating in the frequency range 70-1000 GHz, has a fast scanning mechanism and a cryo-cooled dual-channel THz detector system. Its performance has been tested as per ITER requirements. Assessment of the instrumentation and control requirements, functional and non-functional requirements, operation procedures, plant automation are ongoing for the PDR. The current status of the diagnostic, together with integration activities, is presented.

Electron cyclotron emission (ECE) from hot tokamak plasmas is recognized nowadays as a very informative diagnostic of main plasma parameters. Among several instruments developed to measure ECE, onl...

In ITER, an Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic is planned to measure the electron temperature by measuring the cyclotron radiation in the frequency range of 70-1000 GHz. The cyclotron radiation is usually of low power and needs to be transported with low attenuation over a long distance of ~ 43 m, through a suitable transmission system. Pertaining to long distance, the transmission system will consist of straight waveguide sections, miter bends and waveguide joints. Low power, low loss transmission in a broadband frequency range over long distance makes the design of the transmission system challenging. To arrive at a suitable transmission system, attenuation measurements of three types of transmission lines (TLs) have been performed i.e. circular smooth walled, corrugated and dielectric coated waveguide. A polarizing Michelson interferometer based on Martin-Puplett design has been used to measure the spectrum from waveguide set ups and liquid nitrogen has been used as the black body radiation source. The measured spectrum shows atmospheric water vapour absorption lines in all types of TLs. The preliminary measurement shows that the attenuation of smooth walled waveguide is found to be comparable to corrugated waveguide up to ~ 600GHz and better than corrugated waveguide above 600 GHz for the chosen set of experimental conditions. Further, to avoid water absorption lines, a smooth walled TL is evacuated up to rough vacuum (~10-2mbar) and it was observed that the attenuation is decreased and overall transmission is improved.

The ITER Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic system will provide information about plasma electron temperature and its fluctuations and other important plasma parameters which are required for plasma control and physics studies. The temperature profile measurement in the first harmonic ECE frequency range from 122-230 GHz (for BT = 5.3 T) is obtained by using an O-mode heterodyne radiometer. It is difficult to cover this wide frequency band by one radiometer, due to technological challenges in achieving wide bandwidth for the mixers. So, the present radiometer design has been optimized by considering four receivers, each of bandwidth ~ 30 GHz which can provide reliable temperature measurements. The splitting of frequency band into four receiver bands is efficiently achieved by considering a combination of quasi-optical and waveguide diplexers, optimizing power loss and cross-talk between the channels. The target spatial resolution of a/30, where "a" is the minor radius of the plasma cross section, is achieved by choosing Radiometer IF filter bandwidth of 1-2 GHz. Further, the radiometer is designed to achieve noise temperature < 10 eV. In this paper, the preliminary design and performance of O-mode Radiometer has been discussed.

The ECE Diagnostic system in ITER will be used for measuring the electron temperature profile evolution, electron temperature fluctuations, the runaway electron spectrum, and the radiated power in the electron cyclotron frequency range (70-1000 GHz), These measurements will be used for advanced real time plasma control (e.g. steering the electron cyclotron heating beams), and physics studies. The scope of the Indian Domestic Agency (IN-DA) is to design and develop the polarizer splitter units; the broadband (70 to 1000 GHz) transmission lines; a high temperature calibration source in the Diagnostics Hall; two Michelson Interferometers (70 to 1000 GHz) and a 122-230 GHz radiometer. The remainder of the ITER ECE diagnostic system is the responsibility of the US domestic agency and the ITER Organization (IO). The design needs to conform to the ITER Organization's strict requirements for reliability, availability, maintainability and inspect-ability. Progress in the design and development of various subsystems and components considering various engineering challenges and solutions will be discussed in this paper. This paper will also highlight how various ECE measurements can enhance understanding of plasma physics in ITER.

The Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic system in ITER provides essential information for plasma control and for evaluating the plasma performance. It measures the electron temperature profile (edge/core), electron temperature fluctuations and radiated power in the electron cyclotron frequency range from the plasma. Virginia Diodes Inc. (VDI) has designed and developed a state-of-the-art prototype receiver to detect emission in the 200-300 GHz frequency range. The prototype receiver developed by VDI has been tested at DIII-D tokamak to check its performance by measuring higher frequency ECE harmonics in high temperature plasmas. Bench testing verifies the receiver’s band coverage and noise temperatures. Good sensitivity has been obtained meeting the ITER requirement. Also, the receiver performance is assessed for ITER by comparing the data from the receiver and the existing Michelson interferometer for the same DIII-D plasma shot. The measurement results show that the receiver provides accurate temperature information for the plasma emission throughout the frequency band.

Considerable progress has been made on the design of the ITER electron cyclotron emission (ECE) diagnostic over the past two years. Radial and oblique views are still included in the design in order to measure distortions in the electron momentum distribution, but the oblique view has been redirected to reduce stray millimeter radiation from the electron cyclotron heating system. A major challenge has been designing the 1000 K calibration sources and remotely activated mirrors located in the ECE diagnostic shield module (DSM) in the equatorial port plug #09. These critical systems are being modeled and prototypes are being developed. Providing adequate neutron shielding in the DSM while allowing sufficient space for optical components is also a significant challenge. Four 45-meter long low-loss transmission lines transport the 70–1000 GHz ECE from the DSM to the ECE instrumentation room. Prototype transmission lines are being tested, as are the polarization splitter modules that separate O-mode and X-mode polarized ECE. A highly integrated prototype 200–300 GHz radiometer is being tested on the DIII-D tokamak in the USA. Design activities also include integration of ECE signals into the ITER plasma control system and determining the hardware and software architecture needed to control and calibrate the ECE instruments.

The Electron Cyclotron Emission diagnostic on ITER requires electron temperature profile with 10 μsec time and 6 - 7 cm spatial resolution. The diagnostic is also useful to study many plasma physics phenomenon like temperature fluctuation, non-thermal electrons population and the power loss due to ECE. The conceptual design being considered for ITER ECE consist of a radiometer of frequency range 122 to 220 GHz for O-mode radiation measurement and two Fourier transform spectrometers of frequency range 70 to 1000 GHz as measuring instruments for O-mode and X-mode radiation measurement. There are two lines of sight for the collection of cyclotron radiation. One is radial view and other is oblique view at 10 degree (1). The radiation collected by both view will be transmitted through the polarization splitter boxes and four transmission lines to the diagnostic area. In this paper we will summarize the conceptual design details and changes proposed at the Conceptual Design Review. The required calibration time for the ECE measuring instrument will be discussed in the paper.

In this study, the baseline design for the ITER electron cyclotron emission (ECE) diagnostic has entered the detailed preliminary design phase. Two plasma views are planned, a radial view and an oblique view that is sensitive to distortions in the electron momentum distribution near the average thermal momentum. Both views provide high spatial resolution electron temperature profiles when the momentum distribution remains Maxwellian. The ECE diagnostic system consists of the front-end optics, including two 1000 K calibration sources, in equatorial port plug EP9, the 70-1000 GHz transmission system from the front-end to the diagnostics hall, and the ECE instrumentation in the diagnostics hall. The baseline ECE instrumentation will include two Michelson interferometers that can simultaneously measure ordinary and extraordinary mode ECE from 70 to 1000 GHz, and two heterodyne radiometer systems, covering 122-230 GHz and 244-355 GHz. Significant design challenges include 1) developing highly-reliable 1000 K calibration sources and the associated shutters/mirrors, 2) providing compliant couplings between the front-end optics and the polarization splitter box that accommodate displacements of the vacuum vessel during plasma operations and bake out, 3) protecting components from damage due to stray ECH radiation and other intense millimeter wave emission and 4) providing the low-loss broadbandmore » transmission system.« less

The Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostic provides essential information for plasma operation and for establishing performance characteristics in ITER. Recently, the design of the ITER ECE diagnostic has been taken through the conceptual design review and now entering the detailed design phase [1, 2]. The baseline ECE system on ITER permits measurements of both the X- and O-mode radiation in the frequency range from 70 GHz up to 1 THz along two lines-of-sight, perpendicular and oblique at about 10 degrees, in the equatorial port. The system as planned meets the ITER measurement requirements. Nevertheless, there are several other mm-wave diagnostics in ITER, such as HFS, LFS and plasma position reflectometry, as well as Collective Thomson scattering system, whose transmission lines allow, in principle, additional measurements of parts of the ECE spectrum with upgrades of their back-ends, improvements in filtering and/or additional receivers. A discussion of whether and how supposedly to enable such ECE measurements is given here.

In tokamaks, the radial temperature profile measured using Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) diagnostics are affected by many phenomena like harmonics overlap, relativistic down shifting, presence of non-thermals etc. In this paper we have estimated effects of a small non-thermal electron population on measured temperature profile for ITER-Scenario 2. For ITER like plasma, radial temperature profiles can be obtained from the second harmonic ECE spectrum. It is possible that, higher harmonics produced from the non-thermals can be relativistically downshifted to second harmonics and introduce error in the measured temperature profile. Generally Non-thermals are produced from Electron Cyclotron Resonance heating (ECRH), Electron Cyclotron Current Drive (ECCD) etc. In the present study the non-thermals are assumed to be produced from proposed ECCD, which is being considered for suppressing Neoclassical Tearing Modes (NTM). We have ignored any other source of non-thermals in the present study. All the numerical calculations reported in this paper is performed using NOTEC computer code which is capable of handling non-thermal populations. The locations and spatial extents of non-thermals are taken from previous report on optimization study of the ITER ECRH top launcher. The non-thermals are assumed to be centered around safety points q=1, q=1.5 and q=2, where the ECCD is expected to be used for suppressing the NTMs. The main results of the present study are summarized below. In the first part of the paper we present the results for temperature measurement with out non-thermal populations for the purpose of validation. Secondly the rage of higher harmonic frequencies (due to nonthermals) which possibly reach antenna and induce error in the temperature measurement are identified and the corresponding energies of non-thermal populations are calculated analytically. This calculations are further checked by simulations using NOTEC code. Finally non-thermal populations are seeded in the plasma with fraction and energies of non-thermals are varied in a parametric form. The parametric range of energies are initially bracketed by the analytical calculations explained above. The resultant temperature profiles and error in the measured temperatures will be presented.