Motional Stark effect imaging first results on the DIII-D tokamak.

A motional Stark effect (MSE) imaging diagnostic was benchmarked against existing conventional MSE polarimeters on the DIII-D tokamak and delivered new capabilities for measuring the magnetic pitch angle from 2 neutral beams and on the high field side of DIII-D. Line integration across flux surfaces was considerable for the radial view utilised; nevertheless, the imaging MSE measurements from both beams were self-consistent and in close agreement with conventional MSE measurements. The ferroelectric liquid crystal waveplate used in the imaging polarimeter was discovered to have spatially non-uniform retardance; hence, it is necessary for the calibration source to replicate the ray paths of the neutral beam emission through the optical system.

A high spatial resolution Stokes polarimeter for motional Stark effect imaging.

We describe an enhanced temporally switched interfero-polarimeter that has been successfully deployed for high spatial resolution motional Stark effect imaging on the KSTAR superconducting tokamak. The system utilizes dual switching ferroelectric liquid crystal waveplates to image the full Stokes vector of elliptically polarized and Doppler-shifted Stark-Zeeman Balmer-alpha emission from high energy neutral beams injected into the magnetized plasma. We describe the optical system and compare its performance against a Mueller matrix model that takes account of non-ideal performance of the switching ferro-electric liquid crystal waveplates and other polarizing components.