ECRad: An electron cyclotron radiation transport solver for advanced data analysis in thermal and non-thermal fusion plasmas

Abstract We present a code for the large-scale data analysis of electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements from magnetized plasmas called ECRad – the Electron Cyclotron Radiation transport model for Advanced Data analysis. Its key features are low computational cost, high robustness and the capability to predict ECE spectra of plasmas with non-thermal electron populations. This is accomplished by combining the absorption coefficient given by Albajar et al. (2007) and a corresponding emissivity for the radiation transport with geometrical optics ray tracing for the computation of the diagnostic line of sight. Another important aspect of ECRad is that it has passed a large amount of verification tests against real measurements by conventional, oblique and ECE imaging diagnostics. This paper explains the physical model of ECRad and its implementation. Furthermore, it is discussed how the code can be used for the inference of the electron temperature from ECE measurements and how an oblique ECE diagnostic can be cross-calibrated with ECRad.