Energetic neutral atom imaging detectors for fusion and space plasmas

The past few years have seen a growing interest in the detection and imaging of energetic neutral hydrogen atoms emitted from magnetospheric plasmas. These energetic neutral atoms are created by charge exchange collisions between cold geocoronal neutral hydrogen and energetic magnetospheric hydrogen ions. The authors have developed two approaches suitable for energetic neutral atom imaging. One approach relies on sub-micron period transmission gratings to separate the neutral atoms form any extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray background and the other uses a thin foil ionization process to separate the neutrals from the background. Both approaches have broad applications to the detection of energetic neutral atoms in both laboratory and space plasmas. The authors will present a conceptual design of a high sensitivity, large throughput magnetospheric energetic neutral atom imager and discuss the applications of this instrument for the edge and divertor regions of large tokamak plasmas