Analysis of anisotropic suprathermal ion distributions using multidirectional measurements of escaping neutral atom fluxes.

A feasible approach in obtaining experimental data on the angular dependence of the ion distribution function in a fusion plasma is to perform angle-resolved measurements of kinetic energy spectra of escaping neutral atoms. A general calculation scheme has been developed and realized as a FORTRAN code that has a predictive force to simulate the experimentally measurable anisotropic distributions and random samples of escaping neutral atom kinetic energies for any given angle-dependent ion distribution law, electron density, and temperature profiles, plasma composition, magnetic surface structure, and experiment geometry on any toroidal plasma device with magnetic confinement. As a particular application of the method to a specific experiment, measured signals for all 20 channels of the angle-resolved multisightline neutral particle analyzer on Large Helical Device have been numerically simulated for certain predefined model fast ion distribution functions.

Calculation of low-Z impurity pellet induced fluxes of charge exchange neutral particles escaping from magnetically confined toroidal plasmas.

Measurements of energy- and time-resolved neutral hydrogen and helium fluxes from an impurity pellet ablation cloud, referred to as pellet charge exchange or PCX experiments, can be used to study local fast ion energy distributions in fusion plasmas. The estimation of the local distribution function f(i)(E) of fast ions entering the cloud requires knowledge of both the fraction F(0)(E) of incident ions exiting the cloud as neutral atoms and the attenuation factor A(E,rho) describing the loss of fast atoms in the plasma. Determination of A(E,rho), in turn, requires the total stopping cross section sigma(loss) of neutral atoms in the plasma and the Jacobian reflecting the measurement geometry and the magnetic surface shape. The obtained functions F(0)(E) and A(E,rho) enter multiplicatively into the probability density for escaping neutral particle kinetic energy. A general calculation scheme has been developed and realized as a FORTRAN code, which is to be applied for the calculation of f(i)(E) from PCX experimental results obtained with low-Z impurity pellets.