Phase imaging systems for measurement of plasma density contours

During recent years, there has been considerable interest in obtaining spatially localized time resolved density measurements in fusion plasmas. However, the study of such phenomena requires many channels of information on a scale much finer than available with current discrete chordal view multichannel interferometers. These problems can be overcome by imaging an expanded probe beam occupying the entire plasma port crosssection onto a linear detector array[1], thereby significantly reducing the number of optical components and hence the cost and complexity of the system compared with a comparable discrete chord multichannel interferometer. Other more fundamental advantages of the imaging technique include compensation for phase errors due to plasma refraction, whilst the diffraction limited system resolution (typically ≃ 1cm for FIR probe wavelengths) allows the use of many detector channels for high spatial sampling rates. and hence accurate reconstruction of the density profiles.