A novel approach to direct measurement of the plasma potential

A novel probe and approach to the direct measurements of the plasma potential in a strong magnetic field is suggested. The principle of this method is to reduce the electron saturation current to the same magnitude as that of the ion saturation current. In this case, the floating potential of the probe becomes identical to the plasma potential. This goal is attained by a shield, which screens off an adjustable part of the electron current from the probe collector due to the much smaller gyro-radius of the electrons. First systematic measurements have been performed in the CASTOR tokamak.