On the accuracy of measurements of electron temperature by Thomson scattering diagnostic in the plasma core of the ITER tokamak

Abstract

The ITER tokamak project includes a Thomson scattering diagnostic designed to measure electron temperature and density in the plasma core. The system is required to provide measurements over a wide temperature range while meeting stringent accuracy requirements. A previous study analyzed the errors of electron temperature measurements to assess the feasibility of these requirements. The analysis concluded that the central electron temperature could be measured with the required accuracy of 10% for temperatures up to 40 keV at a minimum electron density of 3*10^19 m^-3. However, those results were based on an overestimation of the number of photoelectrons generated in detectors by the scattered radiation due to the incorrect application of the Thomson scattering cross-section. As a consequence, the temperature measurement errors were significantly underestimated. In the present work, the accuracy of electron temperature measurements in the ITER plasma core is reassessed using the corrected photoelectron yield derived from published data and incorporating the effects of background radiation. The revised analysis shows that the proposed diagnostic system can achieve the required accuracy of 10% for temperatures up to 20 keV at low plasma background radiation, whereas under high background radiation this accuracy can only be maintained up to 1 keV. To achieve the 10% accuracy across the full temperature range while preserving the current diagnostic configuration, either the energy of the probing laser pulse must be increased by a factor of 2-4 or the least electron density must be raised to 6*10^19 m^-3.