Multi-point measurement using two-channel reflectometer with antenna switching for study of high-frequency fluctuations in GAMMA 10.
A two-channel microwave reflectometer system with fast microwave antenna switching capability was developed and applied to the GAMMA 10 tandem mirror device to study high-frequency small-amplitude fluctuations in a hot mirror plasma. The fast switching of the antennas is controlled using PIN diode switches, which offers the significant advantage of reducing the number of high-cost microwave components and digitizers with high bandwidths and large memory that are required to measure the spatiotemporal behavior of the high-frequency fluctuations. The use of two channels rather than one adds the important function of a simultaneous two-point measurement in either the radial direction or the direction of the antenna array to measure the phase profile of the fluctuations along with the normal amplitude profile. The density fluctuations measured using this system clearly showed the high-frequency coherent fluctuations that are associated with Alfvén-ion-cyclotron (AIC) waves in GAMMA 10. A correlation analysis applied to simultaneously measured density fluctuations showed that the phase component that was included in a reflected microwave provided both high coherence and a clear phase difference for the AIC waves, while the amplitude component showed neither significant coherence nor clear phase difference. The axial phase differences of the AIC waves measured inside the hot plasma confirmed the formation of a standing wave structure. The axial variation of the radial profiles was evaluated and a clear difference was found among the AIC waves for the first time, which would be a key to clarify the unknown boundary conditions of the AIC waves.
Multichannel microwave interferometer with an antenna switching system for electron density measurement in a laboratory plasma experiment.
This study presents a simple and powerful technique for multichannel measurements of the density profile in laboratory plasmas by microwave interferometry. This technique uses electromechanical microwave switches to temporally switch the connection between multiple receiver antennas and one phase-detection circuit. Using this method, the phase information detected at different positions is rearranged into a time series that can be acquired from a minimum number of data acquisition channels (e.g., two channels in the case of quadrature detection). Our successfully developed multichannel microwave interferometer that uses the antenna switching method was applied to measure the radial electron density profiles in a magnetized plasma experiment. The advantage of the proposed method is its compactness and scalability to multidimensional measurement systems at low cost.
Coherent pulsed injection seeding of two gain-switched semiconductor lasers
High-power, narrow-spectrum, short pulses at a wavelength near 830 nm are needed for optical logic applications. The authors report the generation of two coherent trains of pulses by pulsed injection seeding of two gain-switched semiconductor lasers with one mode-locked master oscillator. The available power was doubled and both lasers emit in nearly identical spectral lines. Short pulses (30-50 ps) are generated at a repetition rate of 1.9 GHz. The spectrum is reduced to a single mode cluster and shows a 1.7 AA wide chirp suitable for pulse compression. The peak power is 0.1 W for each pulse train. The capability of this technique for coherent power combining is demonstrated.<<ETX>>