Neutral Probe Beam q-profile measurements in PDX and PBX-M

Using the Fast Ion Diagnostic Experiment (FIDE) technique, a Neutral Probe Beam (NPB) can be aimed to inject tangentially to a magnetic surface. The resultant ion orbit shifts, due to conservation of canonical toroidal angular momentum, can be measured with a multi-sightline charge-exchange analyzer to yield direct measurements of radial magnetic flux profiles, current density profiles, the radial position of the magnetic axis, flux surface inner and outer edges, q-profiles, and central-q time dependencies. An extensive error analysis was performed on previous PDX q-measurements in circular plasmas and the resulting estimated contributions of various systematic effects are discussed. Preliminary results of fast ion orbit shift measurements at early times in indented PBX-M plasmas are given. Methods for increasing the absolute experimental precision of similar measurements in progress on PBX-M are discussed. 4 refs., 3 figs