Studies of the super-thermal and runaway electron behavior in ohmic and lower hybrid current drive FT-2 tokamak plasmas have been carried out using information obtained from measurements of hard x-ray spectra and non-thermal microwave radiation intensity at the frequency of 10 GHz and in the range of (53 ÷ 78) GHz. A gamma-ray spectrometer based on a scintillation detector with a LaBr3(Ce) crystal was used, which provides measurements at counting rates up to 107 s−1. Reconstruction of the energy distribution of RE interacting with the poloidal limiter of the tokamak chamber was made with application of the DeGaSum code. Super-thermal electrons accelerated up to 2 MeV by the LH waves at the high-frequency pumping of the plasma with low density ~ 2  ×  1013 cm−3 and then up to 7 MeV by vortex electric field have been found. Experimental analysis of the runaway electron beam generation and evolution of their energy distribution in the FT-2 plasmas is presented in the article and compared with the numerical calculation of the maximum energy gained by runaway electrons for given plasma parameters. In addition, possible mechanisms for limiting the maximum energy gained by the runaway electrons are also calculated and described for a FT-2 plasma discharge.

The importance of runaway electron (RE) detection, analysis of its parameters and suppression or mitigation is well recognized for large size tokamaks such as ITER. One of the wellestablished detection techniques is hard x-ray spectrometry that detects bremsstrahlung emission typically in the MeV range from the REs. It provides space, time and energy resolved measurements, which can also be utilized for the reconstruction of the RE energy distribution function. In this paper, forward modeling has been carried out for the detection of the confined REs and a numerical tool is developed. It calculates analytically anisotropic bremsstrahlung emissivity at each spatial position in the plasma in terms of several plasma, RE and geometrical parameters. The simulation provides line integrated energy resolved spectra of bremsstrahlung photons. The expected bremsstrahlung emission signal during plasma disruptions scenario as measured with the ITER hard x-ray monitor has been simulated for the first time aiming on optimizing the design parameters of this diagnostic. The possible dynamic range for the detection of confined REs is studied as well. The effect of the shape of the runaway distribution function in the momentum space on the observed diagnostic signal is also studied and briefly discussed.

Studies of runaway electrons in present day tokamaks are essential to improve theoretical models and to support possible avoidance or suppression mechanisms in future large-scale plasma devices. Some of the phenomena associated with the runaway electrons take place at faster time scales, and thus it is essential to probe the runaway electrons to investigate underlying physics. The present article reports a few experimental observations of runaway electron associated events, at fast time scales, using a state-of-the-art multi-detector system developed at the Ioffe Institute and recently deployed on the TUMAN-3M tokamak. The system is based on the highperformance scintillation gamma-ray spectrometers for measurements of bremsstrahlung generated during the interaction of accelerated electrons with plasma and materials of the tokamak chamber. It includes a total three detectors configured in the spectroscopic mode having different lines of sight. Along with this hardware, dedicated algorithms were developed and validated that enables the separation of piled-up pulses, maximize the dynamic range of the detector and provides a counting rate as high as 10 7 counts per second. The inversion code, DeGaSum, has been used for the reconstruction of a runaway electron energy distribution function from the measured gamma-ray spectra. Using this tool, experimental analysis of the runaway electron beam generation and evolution of their energy distribution in the TUMAN-3M representative plasma discharges is performed. The effect on gamma-ray count rate during the magnetohydrodynamic activities and possible changes in the runaway electron energy distribution function during sawtooth oscillations is discussed in detail. Possible maximum limit of the runaway electron energy in TUMAN-3M is investigated and compared with the numerical analysis. In addition, the probability of the runaway electron generation throughout the plasma discharge is estimated analytically and compared with the experimental observation that suggests a balance between production and loss of the runaway electrons.

To study the runaway electron (RE) dynamics during plasma discharge and develop scenarios for disruption mitigation, a hard x-ray (HXR) spectrometric system has been developed and commissioned at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak (AUG). The diagnostic system consists of two high-performance spectrometers based on LaBr3(Ce) scintillation detectors supplied with advanced electronics and analysis algorithms. These spectrometers view the AUG tokamak chamber quasi-radially at the equatorial plane. The measurements were carried out in the RE beam generation regimes by injecting argon into a deuterium plasma. In the interaction of a developed RE beam with a heavy gas target, powerful bremsstrahlung flux is induced, reaching energy close to 20 MeV. The electron energy distributions were reconstructed from the measured HXR spectra by deconvolution methods. The experimentally obtained maximum RE energies at different discharge stages were compared with relativistic test particle simulations that include the effect of toroidal electric field, plasma collisional drag force, synchrotron deceleration force. It was observed that the electrons attain their maximum energies within 50-100 ms after the gas injection. It gradually decreases due to the drop in loop voltage, energy loss due to synchrotron radiation emission and collisions dissipation of energy with the background plasma. HXR measurements at the discharge with multiple deuterium pellet injections allowed observing the effects of plasma cooling and argon ion

Emissive probes have been used for the direct measurement of plasma potential in many plasma devices and different approaches have been introduced to measure plasma potential using emissive probes. But the biggest disadvantage of the emissive probe is its short lifespan due to its self-arrangement and different plasma environment. For example, filament emissive probes cannot be used in high-temperature plasma devices. A few initiatives have begun to measure the plasma potential by using a laser-heated emissive probe. In these cases, mostly graphite and LaB6 are being used as a probe tip to emit electrons by heating them with a laser light. However, very few studies aiming to understand the mechanism of the heating process of the graphite material have been performed. The heating dynamics of the graphite material heated by a CW CO2 laser with a maximum power of 30 W have been investigated in this study. The in situ temperature of the probe tip has been measured by using an infrared camera. Complete theoretical and simulation models have been developed to understand the experimentally measured data. Further, the experimental results are compared with ANSYS simulations.