CORRELATION-PROPERTIES OF BLACK-BODY RADIATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ELECTRON-CYCLOTRON EMISSION OF A MAGNETIZED PLASMA

The quest for the cause of the anomalously large heat transport in magnetically confined thermonuclear plasmas has motivated detailed studies of fluctuations of various plasma parameters and, among others, of the electron temperature fluctuations. For an optically thick plasma the fluctuations of the electron cyclotron emission, ECE, are proportional to the electron temperature fluctuations up to a critical frequency where this ceases to be true. For the ultimate purpose of recovering, by correlation analysis, the actual plasma temperature fluctuations from the fluctuations of the measured radiation at frequencies above the critical, the mutual correlation properties of two ECE beams are analyzed and a criterion is obtained to decide when the thermal radiation fluctuations are uncorrelated and hence ignorable.