Phase Contrast Imaging on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak

Phase Contrast Imaging (PCI) is a new diagnostic that was built for the Alcator C-Mod tokamak.It measures line-integrated (along 12 vertical chords) plasma density perturbations with good temporal (2-500 kHz) and wavenumber (0.5-12 /cm) resolution.The Quasi-Coherent (QC) fluctuation mode was studied using the PCI and other diagnostics.The mode was found to cause fluctuation of density, electric and magnetic field in the plasma edge with typical frequency of 100 kHz and typical poloidal wavenumber of about 5/cm.The mode was found to be responsible for confinement properties of the "Enhanced D-alpha H-mode" (a particularly favorable regime of tokamak operation).Through numerical modeling, the physical origin of the fluctuations was tentatively identified as "resistive X-point" mode (a kind of resistive ballooning mode strongly affected by the X-point configuration of magnetic field lines).The PCI system has been upgraded to detect waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF, 40-80 MHz) by means of optical heterodyning -a technique based on modulation of the diagnostic laser beam near the wave frequency.The upgraded system was then used to study propagation of the Fast Magnetosonic Waves.These waves, which have never been measured in detail in past experiments, are being used to heat the tokamak plasma at the megawatt power level.The measured results were compared to the simple cold-plasma dispersion relation and to predictions of the full-wave 3D numerical modeling.