X-ray Spectroscopy in Fusion Research

Abstract

A review is given of spectroscopic studies of the x-ray emission from tokamak plasmas of hydrogen or deuterium. The characteristic line emission for highly ionized impurity elements reflects the plasma conditions under which the ions are produced and their excited states populated. This makes it possible to deduce plasma diagnostic information from measurements of x-ray line spectra. The conditions encountered in a tokamak plasma of relevance to the x-ray emission are discussed as well as the crystal spectrometers used for the measurements; comparisons are made with observations that can be made in the visible/UV and VUV regions.