A wide-frequency range (50-300 kHz) power system has been implemented for use with a new RF antenna - the "Shoelace" antenna - built to drive coherent plasma fluctuations in the edge of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. A custom, dynamically tunable matching network allows two commercial 1 kW, 50-Ω RF amplifiers to drive the low-impedance, inductive load presented by the antenna. This is accomplished by a discretely variable L-match network, with 81 independently selected steps available for each of the series and parallel legs of the matching configuration.
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February 2009
A new, high-field side scanning probe has been added to Alcator C-Mod's complement of edge diagnostics. The wall scanning probe is designed to provide all the benefits of a linear plunge, multielectrode scanning probe while working from the confined space of the inner tokamak wall. The drive mechanism is an embedded coil which produces a torque with the ambient toroidal magnetic field when energized, thus allowing the probe to plunge to different preprogramed depths at different times during a plasma discharge.
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