Measurements of Isat fluctuations

#Motivation Remember the good old days when theory predicted that tokamak confinement was absolutely fantastic? You probably don’t, it was a very long time ago. Since then, we’ve seen evidence that plasma confinement in tokamaks is, sadly, deteriorated by several processes - and edge turbulence is one of them. Why is the edge turbulent? Where is the turbulence strongest? How does the turbulence look in single-probe measurements? You’ll find out in this task!

#Task outline

  • Learn about turbulence in tokamaks: why, where, and why it matters to us so much
  • Get acquainted with probe measurements (Langmuir probe theory & real probes on GOLEM)
  • Perform experiments with the rake probe
    • Pins in the \(I_{sat}\) regime, we measure density and temperature spikes = turbulence
  • Interpret the data using Python (or any language you feel comfortable with, but then you won’t get much advice from me :( )
    • Mainly we’ll be drawing fluctuation distribution functions and finding their properties: relative fluctuation level, skewness and kurtosis

#Resources