Publications by authors named "M Aftanas"

A new technique for fitting the full radial profiles of electron density and temperature obtained by the Thomson scattering diagnostic in H-mode discharges on the COMPASS tokamak is described. The technique combines the conventionally used modified hyperbolic tangent function for the edge transport barrier (pedestal) fitting and a modification of a Gaussian function for fitting the core plasma. Low number of parameters of this combined function and their straightforward interpretability and controllability provide a robust method for obtaining physically reasonable profile fits.

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The ball-pen probe (BPP) technique is used successfully to make profile measurements of the electron temperature on the ASDEX Upgrade (Axially Symmetric Divertor Experiment), COMPASS (COMPact ASSembly), and ISTTOK (Instituto Superior Tecnico TOKamak) tokamak. The electron temperature is provided by a combination of the BPP potential (ΦBPP) and the floating potential (Vfl) of the Langmuir probe (LP), which is compared with the Thomson scattering diagnostic on ASDEX Upgrade and COMPASS. Excellent agreement between the two diagnostics is obtained for circular and diverted plasmas and different heating mechanisms (Ohmic, NBI, ECRH) in deuterium discharges with the same formula Te = (ΦBPP - Vfl)/2.

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The core Thomson scattering diagnostic (TS) on the COMPASS tokamak was put in operation and reported earlier. Implementation of edge TS, with spatial resolution along the laser beam up to ∼1/100 of the tokamak minor radius, is presented now. The procedure for spatial calibration and alignment of both core and edge systems is described.

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The electron density and temperature profiles measured by the Thomson scattering diagnostic on the COMPASS tokamak are used for estimation of electron kinetic energy, energy confinement time, and effective charge number Z(eff). Data are compared with the line-integrated electron density measured by a microwave interferometer in an ohmically heated plasma with a circular cross section. An error analysis of both electron temperature and density are performed by two methods-a constant chi-square boundaries method and a Monte Carlo simulation, determining asymmetrical error bars for the electron temperature.

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COMPASS tokamak shots at low magnetic field feature overdense plasmas during the extended current flat-top phase. The first harmonic of the electron cyclotron emission is completely cutoff for O and X modes and so the emission caused by electron Bernstein waves (EBWs) propagating obliquely with respect to the magnetic field and undergoing so called EBW-X-O conversion process can be observed. We perform an angular scan of the EBW emission during a set of comparable shots in order to determine the optimum antenna direction.

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