Tokamak T-10 soft x-ray imaging diagnostic.

Three arrays of silicon surface-barrier diodes were recently installed on T-10 (R=1.5 m, a=0.3 m). The detectors view the plasma cross section along 58 chords spaced in the poloidal direction at one toroidal location. The tomographic reconstruction technique allows one to obtain the time evolution of the two-dimensional soft x-ray intensity profiles in the energy range of 2.5–15 keV. The field of view covered the main part of the plasma (r/a<0.7) with a spatial resolution as small as 2 cm, which is consistent with the scale of the processes under study. The signals are digitized at rates up to 100 kHz and stored in 464K (total) memory (8K per channel). The measured soft x-ray emission was applicable for investigation of the magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, heat and particle transport, and plasma position control. Studies of the evolution of soft x-ray perturbations were made in ohmically and ECRH heated plasmas. It was shown that the effect of ECRH on the plasma parameters (transport coefficients, sawtooth activity, modification of the electron temperature profiles) depends on the position of the EC resonance zone within the plasma cross section. The tomographic reconstruction revealed the different mechanisms of sawtooth crashes in the T-10 plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]