Simulation of stray laser light of Thomson scattering systems in the HL-2M tokamak

Stray laser light is a serious problem that interrupts the measurement of electron temperature and density in Thomson scattering (TS) systems. This paper presents a ray-tracing simulation of stray laser light in HL-2M TS systems. A model including (i) a simplified laser-beam injection system, (ii) the scattered-light collection systems for central-point TS (CPTS) and edge TS (ETS), and (iii) the HL-2M vessel is built using the TracePro and CATIA software packages based on measurements of the bidirectional scattering distribution function at a wavelength of 532 nm. The simulation results show that no stray laser light reaches the injection surface of the collection lens of the CPTS system, and only a few stray laser rays of all the rays reaching the injection surface of the collection lens of the ETS system can be collected when the energy threshold per ray is 1 × 10−16. The stray laser rays that reach the scattered-light collection systems are mainly from the first and second parts of the slides of the beam dump, so decreasing the roughness of those parts could be effective in reducing the level of stray laser light.