Diagnostic strategy of the W7-X stellarator

The Wendelstein 7-X experiment is a concept test for properties of reactor relevant plasmas in advanced stellarators. Prominent features include a modular superconducting coil assembly, a fivefold toroidal symmetry, and a helical magnetic axis. Due to the optimization process, W7-X is characterized by a vacuum magnetic field configuration with smooth magnetic surfaces, improved equilibrium properties with a weak dependence of rotational transform and shear on the plasma pressure beta, good magneto-hydrodynamic stability properties due to magnetic well stabilization, reduced neoclassical transport losses and negligible bootstrap current in the long mean-free-path regime, good collisionless alpha-particle confinement in an equivalent reactor, and, as a technical aspect,good feasibility of the superconducting modular coils. W7-X will be heated by continuous electron cyclotron resonance heating and pulsed neutral beam injection and ion cyclotron resonance heating. The envisaged parameters are T-e less than or equal to 10 keV, T-i less than or equal to 6 keV central densities less than or equal to 3 x 10(20) m(-3) with an averaged [beta] less than or equal to 5%. Despite the complicated geometrical structure, all basic diagnostics are compatible with W7-X. Generally, diagnostic methods and applications in a stellarator are not different from those in tokamaks. However, special efforts are being made to equip the experiment with those diagnostics necessary to measure the quantities directly related with the optimization of the machine: the verification of the predicted magnetic topology and characterization of the configuration throughout the entire parameter range, the identification of equilibrium and stability, and the determination of the confinement properties. The article describes the strategy developed which assures that the detailed measurement needs of the W7-X experimental program can be met. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.