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Energy composition of high-energy neutral beams on the COMPASS tokamak

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2016

Abstract

The COMPASS tokamak is equipped with two identical neutral beam injectors (NBI) for additional plasma heating. They provide a beam of deuterium atoms with a power of up to similar to(2 x 300) kW.

We show that the neutral beam is not monoenergetic but contains several energy components. An accurate knowledge of the neutral beam power in each individual energy component is essential for a detailed description of the beam-plasma interaction and better understanding of the NBI heating processes in the COMPASS tokamak.

This paper describes the determination of individual energy components in the neutral beam from intensities of the Doppler-shifted D alpha lines, which are measured by a high-resolution spectrometer viewing the neutral beam-line at the exit of NBI. Furthermore, the divergence of beamlets escaping single aperture of the last accelerating grid is deduced from the width of the Doppler-shifted lines.

Recently, one of the NBI systems was modified by the removal of the Faraday copper shield from the ion source. The comparison of the beam composition and the beamlet divergence before and after this modification is also presented.