Characterization of dust particles in the TEXTOR tokamak with Thomson scattering diagnostic

The presence of dust particles in a fusion plasma is recognized as a serious issue for safe and efficient operation of the ITER tokamak. The paper presents an in situ laser assisted method for characterization of dust from thermal emission of the particles. The method was developed in the TEXTOR tokamak with the use of Thomson scattering (TS). The diagnostic is capable to detect single particles and measure the dust density profile along the laser probing axis, velocity distribution of dust particles along this axis as well as surface temperature and size of the detected particles.