High Power Terahertz Systems for Characterizing Burning Plasmas

As fusion science research advances towards the demonstration of practical burning plasma reactors for commercial adoption, there is a growing need to develop diagnostic systems for monitoring various plasma parameters in real time for control and shaping of the plasma density and profile. Recently, experiments have demonstrated the potential of microwave reflectometry for mapping the plasma density profile with a critical need for sources > 300 GHz for divertor reflectometry. Another emerging technique is a high-k scattering system [1] for studying microturbulence physics by providing a measurement of the k θ -spectrum of electron temperature gradient (ETG), trapped-electron modes (TEMs), and ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes. [2], [3].