The multichannel triple-laser interferometer/polarimeter system at RTP

yA 19-channel combined interferometer and polarimeter system has recently become operational at the Rijnhuizen Tokamak Project (a = 0.164 m, R = 0.72 m, B-tor less than or equal to 2.5 T, I-p less than or equal to 150 kA, plasma pulse duration less than or equal to 500 ms), in order to determine the poloidal magnetic field and plasma density distribution simultaneously. The method is based on the separate propagation of two counter-rotating, circularly polarized probing waves, and enables high temporal resolution measurements of both the interferometric and the polarimetric phase change using only one detector per Line of sight. In this article a thorough discussion of the (polarization-related) optical, electronic, and computational aspects of the system will be presented. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.