Validation of the imaging neutral particle analyzer in nearly MHD quiescent plasmas using injected beam ions on DIII-D.

The imaging neutral particle analyzer (INPA) is a scintillator-based diagnostic that provides energy and radially resolved measurements of confined fast ions. To verify operation, understanding and modeling of the diagnostic performance, distributions of deuterium beam ions in low density, nearly MHD-quiescent plasmas are measured on the DIII-D tokamak using the INPA. The distribution is altered by changing the pitch-angle scattering rate with electron cyclotron heating (ECH). Experimental images are mostly reproduced with simulation of core fast ions charge exchanging with injected beam and edge cold neutrals in classical cases. Image comparisons between the experiment and simulation show agreement with less than 25% discrepancies near the beam injection energy of 50 keV. Other strong passive signals, observed in a localized region on the image, are suggested to come from charge exchange between cold neutrals and fast ions around the plasma boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]