This article describes the design and performance of a multi-point ͑200͒ high repetition rate ͑4ϫ50 Hz͒ Thomson scattering diagnostic installed on the Large Helical Device. A unique feature of this system is its oblique back scattering configuration, which enables us to observe the entire plasma region along a major radius on the midplane under a severely restricted port constraint. High throughput collection optics using a mosaic mirror of 1.5 mϫ1.8 m area yield high quality data even with 0.5 J pulse energy delivered from 50 Hz repetition rate Nd: yttrium-aluminum-garnet lasers. High repetition and high spatial resolution ͑2-4 cm͒ of the system enable us to study island evolution in the plasma.

OVERVIEW OF THE LARGE HELICAL DEVICE PROJECT. The Large Helical Device (LHD) has successfully started running plasma confinement experiments after a long construction period of eight years. During the construction and machine commissioning phases, a variety of milestones were attained in fusion engineering which successfully led to the first operation, and the first plasma was ignited on 31 March 1998. Two experimental campaigns are planned in 1998. In the first campaign, the magnetic flux mapping clearly demonstrated a nested structure of magnetic surfaces. The first plasma experiments were conducted with second harmonic 84 and 82.6 GHz ECH at a heating power input of 0.35 MW. The magnetic field was set at 1.5 T in these campaigns so as to accumulate operational experience with the superconducting coils. In the second campaign, auxiliary heating with NBI at 3 MW has been carried out. Averaged electron densities of up to 6 × 10 19 m-3 , central temperatures ranging from 1.4 IAEA-F1-CN-69/OV1/4 2 to 1.5 keV and stored energies of up to 0.22 MJ have been attained despite the fact that the impurity level has not yet been minimized. The obtained scarling of energy confinement time has been found to be consistent with the ISS95 scaling law with some enhancement.

Laser scattering signals that indicate the presence of small dust particles (diameter ⩽ 2 μm) have been occasionally observed in the JIPPT-IIU tokamak chamber. This phenomenon was reproduced deliberately by spreading carbon dust from the top of the vacuum chamber. No noticeable effect on the plasma was observed for dust falls of up to at least 106 particles (10 μg) in 20 ms during discharges. Dust falling just before plasma startup seemed to be confined but it was soon ejected (in less than 30 ms)

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During the first two years of the LHD experiment the following results have been achieved: (i) higher Te (Te(0) = 4.4 keV at ne = 5.3 × 10 18 m −3 and P abs = 1.8 MW); (ii) higher confinement (τE = 0.3 s, Te(0) = 1.1 keV at ne = 6.5 × 10 19 m −3 and P abs = 2.0 MW); (iii) higher stored energy, W dia p = 880 kJ at B = 2.75 T. High performance plasmas have been realized in the inward shifted magnetic axis configuration (R = 3.6 m) where helical symmetry is recovered and the particle orbit properties are improved by a trade-off of MHD stability properties due to the appearance of a magnetic hill. Energy confinement was systematically higher than that predicted by the International Stellarator Scaling 95 by up to a factor of 1.6 and was comparable with the ELMy H mode confinement capability in tokamaks. This confinement improvement is attributed to configuration control (inward shift of the magnetic axis) and to the formation of a high edge temperature. The average beta value achieved reached 2.4% at B = 1.3 T, the highest beta value ever obtained in a helical device, and so far no degradation of confinement by MHD phenomena has been observed. The inward shifted configuration has also led to successful ICRF minority ion heating. ICRF powers up to 1.3 MW were reliably injected into the plasma without significant impurity contamination, and a plasma with a stored energy of 200 kJ was sustained for 5 s by ICRF alone. As another important result, long pulse discharges of more than 1 min were successfully achieved separately with an NBI heating of 0.5 MW and with an ICRF heating of 0.85 MW.