A multi-wavelength approach to increase polarimeter diagnostic performance in nuclear fusion reactors

Abstract

In future tokamaks, the huge variation of the plasma parameters during a discharge (ramp up, flat top, and ramp down) may involve that a diagnostic suitable for the flat top is not suitable for transients, and vice versa. Moreover, future reactors will start the experimental campaigns in safe scenarios, where events like disruptions are not critical, and they will increase their parameters gradually. Also in this case, a diagnostic optimised for the final target scenario may fail at the beginning of the experimental campaign. Laser-based polarimetry, a plasma diagnostic used in magnetized plasma to measure quantities that are related to the electron density, the magnetic field, and the electron temperature (in the case of relativistic effects), is a typical diagnostic that must be optimised for specific scenarios, since it is affected by several issues (refraction, type-I approximation, noise sensitivity) that limit its range of applicability. The aim of this work is to present a method to solve, or at least alleviate, this type of problem by using a multi-wavelength approach. The main idea consists of measuring the polarisation effects (Faraday rotation and Cotton-Mouton phase shift) with more than one wavelength and then calculating the plasma parameters by a weighted average of the measurements, where the weights are derived from the theory of polarimetry. The analysis is performed simulating the process of measurement introducing a casual error. The outcomes demonstrate that the adoption of a multi-wavelength polarimeter system brings a more accurate measurement in a wider range. Considering that next tokamaks will be implemented with a dual-wavelength interferometer, like the dispersion interferometer-polarimeter of ITER, this proposed approach could be taken into consideration to increase the performances of polarimetry.