Line integrated density measurements on the Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST) using frequency sweep interferometer

Abstract

A frequency sweep interferometer (FSI) operating in the frequency range of 50–75 GHz is installed in the versatile experiment spherical torus spherical tokamak to measure the line integrated density (LID). FSI measures the time derivative of phase to calculate the group delay, which is proportional to the LID under the condition that the microwave frequency is much higher than the plasma frequency. Since the group delay is calculated from the time derivative of phase and the frequency sweep rate, FSI is very sensitive to the measurement noise. In the view point of signal processing, derivative exaggerates the measurement noise. Therefore, sophisticated techniques for phase measurement and frequency linearization are required to obtain meaningful results with FSI. The detailed techniques and the hardware setup are explained in the paper. The LID measured by FSI is benchmarked with the LID measured by a conventional 94 GHz heterodyne interferometer. The two measurements agree well. A conventional interferometer can no longer provide LID when severe phase errors occur. This is because phase errors propagate to subsequent measurements. However, FSI provides LID during the entire discharge time successfully regardless of frequent measurement failure because the LID is obtained in FSI from the time derivative of phase rather than the phase. In this sense, FSI is suitable as a diagnostics for steady state plasmas. The main cause for the phase errors is identified as the beam path displacement due to the refraction of the plasma.