A compact Thomson scattering system

We have made and installed a multipulse Nd:YAG Thomson scattering system for measuring electron temperature and density profiles in the throat of the divertor of the Alcator C-Mod machine. The observing head is located in the vacuum vessel in a re-entrant chamber. It is optically fast and very compact. A system for providing feedback to maintain the laser beam alignment is a part of the observing head assembly. The head is designed to minimize eddy currents, and have a very rigid adjustable mounting to resist the forces generated by the eddy currents during plasma disruptions. A four wavelength polychromator using 25 element avalanche photodiode arrays for spatial resolution has been designed and built for this system. Two of these polychromators and a single observing head will provide 50 spatial resolution elements. copyright 1997 American Institute of Physics