Charge exchange neutral particle analysis with natural diamond detectors on LHD heliotron

Abstract

Semiconductor detectors based on natural diamonds have been installed on the Large Helical Device (LHD) heliotron to measure the energy distribution of charge exchange fast neutral particles from different viewing angles. Advantages of a natural diamond detector (NDD) are (1) very compact size, (2) relatively easy handling, and (3) high energy resolution. Although NDDs are sensitive to visible light, vacuum ultraviolet, and soft x rays, unfavorable pulses produced by such radiation were greatly reduced by choosing an appropriate stainless steel shield in this experiment. In LHD, the time-resolved energy distribution of counter-going beam ions and ion cyclotron range of frequency-produced energetic ions have been successfully obtained by means of an NDD. The performance of NDDs as a neutral particle analyzer and its good suitability to LHD plasmas were demonstrated throughout this work. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.