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Microwave reflectometry diagnostics have been widely used to measure density profiles in fusion plasma. However, the high sensitivity of the diagnostics to plasma turbulence often results in large radial deviations in the edge density profile and causes difficulty in profile evaluation. To improve the performance of profile evaluation, a modified RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) method has been applied to fit the density profiles measured by reflectometry on the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak. Compared with the traditional least-squares method, the modified RANSAC method is much more efficient and robust in fitting the experimental profiles. Furthermore, a combination of RANSAC and a genetic algorithm (GA-RANSAC) is used to further optimize the profile evaluation procedure. The results show that this GA-RANSAC method yields better performance and stabler convergence than the modified RANSAC alone.

The reflectometry on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) is undergoing an upgrade for more comprehensive measurement of plasma density profile and fluctuation. The Data Acquisition and Control System (DACS) has been redeveloped to satisfy the requirements of the upgraded reflectometry. The profile reflectometry works in 30-110 GHz (X-mode) and 40-90GHz (O-mode), when the fluctuation reflectometry operates at 20 fixed frequency points in 50-110GHz (X-mode) and 20-60GHz (O-mode). The PXIe-based DACS includes two 8-channel 14-bit 250MSPS digitizers and ten 8-channel 12-bit 60MSPS digitizers. A self-developed 5-channel 250MSPS arbiter waveform generator (AWG) is used to control voltage control oscillators for frequency sweeping. A trigger and clock manger and a timing module receive the trigger and clock signal from central controller and synchronize all the digitizers and the AWG. The total data rate from digitizers is 2515 MB/S. The Data from digitizers is streamed to a disk array (RAID 0) with data throughput capacity of 3000 MB/S. Meanwhile, selected data is transported to a FPGA based real-time data processing module, which utilize a pre-trained neural network to calculate the plasma density profile. Now the new reflectometry is being installed on EAST, and its performance will be tested in experimental campaign after 2018., 21st IEEE Real Time Conference

The extraordinary mode (X-mode) lower cut-off frequency is proposed for use in the reflectometry diagnostic on ITER for the electron density profile measurement, which is a trade-off between extreme plasma parameters and the accessible probing frequency. In contemporary experiments, the lower cut-off frequency can be identified at the probing frequency below the electron cyclotron frequency (f ce) under certain plasma conditions. We provide here, for the first time, the experimental validation of the use of the lower cut-off frequency for the density profiles via the reflectometry measurement on EAST. The corresponding group delay of the lower cut-off frequency evolves continuously with the upper one, revealing a reasonable radial coverage extension of reflectometry measurement toward the plasma core. It is concluded that the lower cut-off frequency can be used as a supplement to the upper one in the density profile inversion process, which is of particular interest in the high magnetic field and/or density discharge to extend the radial coverage of reflectometry measurement.

Chinese fusion engineering test reactor (CFETR) is under conceptual design to bridge gaps between ITER and DEMO. CFETR is envisioned to produce a 200 MW (200 MW in phase I and will be increased to 1-GW level) fusion power with tritium breeding ratio >1 and a duty cycle time of approximately 0.3–0.5. This paper is to present the status in the conceptual design of CFETR diagnostic system. Based on the experience obtained in the development of ITER diagnostics and combined with CFETR special requirements, progress of CFETR diagnostic system has been described. They mainly includes: 1) the conditions and constraints in CFETR environment and 2) one set of proposed measurements and candidate diagnostic techniques for CFETR phase I. The possible needed R&D activities for future work are under review. Two R&D examples under progress will be introduced.

Simultaneous control of the damaging erosion induced by the transient and steady-state heat/particle fluxes on the divertor target material is one of the critical issues for next-step magnetic fusion devices. H-mode operation without large edge-localized modes has been achieved in EAST with an ITER-like tungsten divertor, while being compatible with the partial and pronounced detachment in divertor, via either ramping-up of bulk density or injection of low/high-Z impurities. The pedestal characteristics during the transition from the attached to the detached divertor and the reversed transition (detached to attached) under different detachment methods are studied in detail, where the evolution of multi fluctuating structures commonly residing in the H-mode pedestal of EAST (edge coherent mode (ECM), magnetic coherent mode (MCM) and high frequency mode (HFM)) is highlighted. In addition, the possible mechanisms that affect the behavior of these modes, such as the pedestal pressure gradient and the collisionality, have also been discussed. The radial structures of ECM, MCM and HFM are detected, for the first time, in one discharge. Relevant research may provide contribution to obtaining an integrated small/no ELM and radiative divertor scenario in the next step.

This paper presents the results of the density scanning experiment on the 2018 EAST campaign to study the effect of gas fueling on energy confinement of the ELMy H-mode. The experiment is carried out in a USN configuration, with neutral beam and lower hybrid wave heating and gas fueling, with the upper triangularity δup ∼ 0.47. The total stored energy, H98, and βN decrease with normalized density. Compared to the variations in temperature at the pedestal, the core temperature decreases more significantly for both Te and Ti, leading to a large reduction in core pressure and an increase in the pedestal electron collisionality ν*e,ped. The increase in ν*e,ped could reduce the pedestal current and result in a decrease in the value of q in the core region. It was observed that the frequency of type I ELMs increases with density and the edge localized mode size becomes smaller at high density plasma. An m/n = 2/2 tearing mode was observed at the core of the plasma and can coexist with a sawtooth at low density plasma while this tearing mode disappeared at high gas fueling plasma. The reversal radius of the sawtooth (where q = 1) moves toward the magnetic axis as density increases. The degradation in performance with density may be due to two reasons: the more monotonic shear q profile and the weakening of the stabilizing effect of fast ions on ion temperature gradient modes at high density by D2 gas fueling. It seems that there is a strong link between core transport and pedestal parameters which are influenced by gas fueling, resulting in a significant degradation of energy confinement.

Edge localized mode (ELM) mitigation accompanied by density pump-out has been achieved during the application of resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) with a toroidal mode number of n = 4 on EAST recently. The mean ELM frequency increases by a factor of 2.7 from 86 to 235 Hz with a decreased reduction in ELM loss. The evolution of pedestal electron density measured by a profile reflectometer before and after turning on the RMP current is presented. Both the pedestal density and density gradient show a decrease with application of RMP. The density fluctuation in the pedestal region has been measured by an O-mode fluctuation reflectometer. The broadband density fluctuation with a frequency range of 20–115 kHz is enhanced at the later period of the inter-ELM phase during ELM mitigation. This phenomenon is also observed for magnetic fluctuation measured by magnetic probes mounted in the vacuum vessel. A further study shows that the enhanced broadband fluctuations lead to a decrease in the growth rate of the pedestal density and an increase in divert or particle flux. This result implies that these enhanced broadband fluctuations could lead to an enhancement of outward particle transport. The possible roles of the enhanced fluctuations observed in ELM mitigation are also discussed.

An eight-channel poloidal correlation reflectometer (PCR) with O-mode polarization has been installed in the EAST tokamak to measure the fluctuations from core to edge. The PCR launches eight different frequency microwaves (20.4, 24.8, 33, 40, 42.4, 48, 52.6, 57.2 GHz) into the plasma from the low field side and two poloidally separated antennae are used to receive the reflected waves. As a result, the diagnostic can measure fluctuations in eight (radial)× two (poloidal) spatial positions. The diagnostic has been applied to study the core and edge pedestal fluctuations during an inter-ELM phase in H-mode plasma. This inter-ELM phase can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, a low frequency (

A cross-scale interaction between a kink instability with toroidal mode number (n) of 1 and background microturbulence (mainly a coherent mode with n = 12–17) has been observed in the H-mode edge pedestal region in the EAST tokamak. The n = 1 kink mode with a frequency ~3.5 kHz is localized in the pedestal region. The amplitude of pedestal microturbulence is evidently modulated at the frequency of the n = 1 mode. This amplitude modulation is mainly for the fluctuation component with frequency less than 100 kHz, while no modulation by the n = 1 mode is observed for the component with frequency larger than 100 kHz. This implies that the observed amplitude modulation by the n = 1 mode is not due to the Doppler shift effect. A further analysis shows that the amplitude modulation of microturbulence could be attributed to modulation of the local temperature gradient by the n = 1 kink mode. In addition, bicoherence analysis indicates that there exists a possible direct nonlinear interaction between background microturbulence and the n = 1 kink instability. A preliminary analysis shows that this cross-scale interaction has no evident effect on the pedestal structure.