Ion beam probe plasma diagnostic system. Annual progress report, 1 February 1976--31 January 1977

The major thrust of this program has been to place the research tokamak facility, RENTOR, in operation and to develop the diagnostic systems to be used on this facility. Tokamak discharges lasting approx.1 msec are routinely produced, with the lifetime limited by magnetic field errors introduced by the large diagnostic boxes. Fine tuning of the fields is presently in progress. A complete heavy ion beam probe system has been constructed and is partially installed. A Thomson scattering experiment has also been developed and is scheduled for installation in the near future. The ten-channel data acquisition system has also been placed in operation with a completely designed computer interface system. In addition several improvements have been made in our minicomputer capabilities in terms of data processing and calculation of ion trajectories. The theory for measuring the magnetic vector potential with a beam probe has been developed and computer simulations have been performed. Finally our test stand operations have continued to lead to improvements in producing and controlling ion beams