Correlation reflectometry at TEXTOR.

In high temperature fusion plasmas the transport of energy and particles is commonly believed to be driven by turbulence. Turbulence quantities as correlation length and decorrelation time are important for the confinement properties of a plasma. Besides other diagnostics, correlation reflectometry has proven to be a suitable tool for the measurement of turbulence properties. At the medium sized Toroidal EXperiment for Technical Oriented Research (TEXTOR) the existing correlation reflectometry has been recently upgraded. A new reflectometer based on a microwave synthesizer has been developed and installed for the investigation of turbulence properties in a fusion plasma. Together with the existing reflectometer the measurement of radial correlation length and decorrelation time becomes available. Both reflectometers are computer controlled and allow to program individual frequency sequences and the duration of each frequency step. With the existing poloidal antenna array at θ=0° and on top of the vacuum vessel, the system allows the measurement of radial correlation and poloidal correlations at the same time. First experiments have been performed and the results on the radial correlation length of density fluctuations in a fusion plasma are presented.

Phase locking of a 1.5 Terahertz quantum cascade laser and use as a local oscillator in a heterodyne HEB receiver.

We demonstrate for the first time the closure of an electronic phase lock loop for a continuous-wave quantum cascade laser (QCL) at 1.5 THz. The QCL is operated in a closed cycle cryo cooler. We achieved a frequency stability of better than 100 Hz, limited by the resolution bandwidth of the spectrum analyser. The PLL electronics make use of the intermediate frequency (IF) obtained from a hot electron bolometer (HEB) which is downconverted to a PLL IF of 125 MHz. The coarse selection of the longitudinal mode and the fine tuning is achieved via the bias voltage of the QCL. Within a QCL cavity mode, the free-running QCL shows frequency fluctuations of about 5 MHz, which the PLL circuit is able to control via the Stark-shift of the QCL gain material. Temperature dependent tuning is shown to be nonlinear, and of the order of -16 MHz/K. Additionally we have used the QCL as local oscillator (LO) to pump an HEB and perform, again for the first time at 1.5 THz, a heterodyne experiment, and obtain a receiver noise temperature of 1741 K.

High-sensitivity mid-infrared heterodyne spectrometer with a tunable diode laser as a local oscillator.

A new mid-IR heterodyne spectrometer, which is intended to be applied for atmospheric and astrophysical studies, is presented. The spectrometer uses a frequency-stabilized tunable diode laser as a local oscillator. Owing to the low output power of available single-mode diode lasers, a newly developed confocal-ring resonator, the diplexer, is used to superimpose the source signal efficiently with that of the local oscillator. Additionally, the diplexer serves as an optical filter that establishes controlled optical feedback between the laser diode and the detector, which allows stable laser operation with linewidths of the order of 1 MHz. The heterodyne signal from the HgCdTe detector is analyzed by means of a 1.4-GHz acousto-optical spectrometer. With this setup we find system temperatures as low as 4400 K (double sideband), that is, approximately a factor of 6 of the quantum limit.