title: Analysis of anisotropic suprathermal ion distributions using multidirectional measurements of escaping neutral atom fluxes.
abstract: A feasible approach in obtaining experimental data on the angular dependence of the ion distribution function in a fusion plasma is to perform angle-resolved measurements of kinetic energy spectra of escaping neutral atoms. A general calculation scheme has been developed and realized as a FORTRAN code that has a predictive force to simulate the experimentally measurable anisotropic distributions and random samples of escaping neutral atom kinetic energies for any given angle-dependent ion distribution law, electron density, and temperature profiles, plasma composition, magnetic surface structure, and experiment geometry on any toroidal plasma device with magnetic confinement. As a particular application of the method to a specific experiment, measured signals for all 20 channels of the angle-resolved multisightline neutral particle analyzer on Large Helical Device have been numerically simulated for certain predefined model fast ion distribution functions.
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Fusion Science, Toki, Gifu 509-5292, Japan.
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Goncharov
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ozaki
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Veshchev
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sudo