Two-dimensional plasma density evolution local to the inversion layer during sawtooth crash events using Beam Emission Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper develops methods to analyze 2-D Beam Emission Spectroscopy data for plasma density evolution during sawtooth crashes in tokamaks, enabling detailed spatial and temporal insights into these rapid events.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for removing edge light pulses and calibrating BES channels, allowing accurate measurement of large-amplitude density oscillations during sawtooth events.

Findings

Large-amplitude density oscillations observed near the inversion layer.

Significant spatial variations in density during sawtooth crashes.

Density peaks correlate with temperature crash timing.

Abstract

We present methods for analyzing Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES) data to obtain the plasma density evolution associated with rapid sawtooth crash events at the DIII-D tokamak. BES allows coverage over a 2-D spatial plane, inherently local measurements, with fast time responses, and therefore provides a valuable new channel for data during sawtooth events. A method is developed to remove sawtooth-induced edge-light pulses contained in the BES data. The edge light pulses appear to be from the $\rm{D}_{\alpha}$ emission produced by edge recycling during sawtooth events, and are large enough that traditional spectroscopic filtering and data analysis techniques are insufficient to deduce physically meaningful quantities. A cross-calibration of 64 BES channels is performed using a novel method to ensure accurate measurements. For the large-amplitude density oscillations observed, we discuss and use the non-linear relationship between BES signal $\delta I/I_{0}$ and plasma density variation $\delta n_{e}/n_{e0}$. 2-D BES images cover a 8~cm~$\times$~20~cm region around the sawtooth inversion layer and show large-amplitude density oscillations, with additional significant spatial variations across the inversion layer, which grows and peaks near the time of the temperature crash. The edge light removal technique and method of converting large-amplitude $\delta I/I_{0}$ to $\delta n_{e}/n_{e0}$ presented here may help analyze other impulsive MHD phenomena in tokamaks.