Electron cyclotron emission investigations at the stellarator TJ-K

Microwave diagnostics are widely used in fusion-oriented plasma research. Especially, electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements are routinely employed for reliable investigations of radial temperature profiles. Furthermore, an ECE diagnostic can be used to measure electron densities or detect superthermal electrons. Due to its non-invasive character, it is well suited for application to extreme conditions like in fusion plasmas since neither the plasma is perturbed nor the diagnostic harmed. Despite decades of development, ECE diagnostics are still subject of current research and development. Especially the correct interpretation of measurements at plasmas with low densities and temperatures, which are in contrast to fusion plasmas optically thin, is challenging. The stellarator experiment TJ-K in Stuttgart is operated with such thin plasmas allowing for the use of Langmuir probes for temperature measurements and thus as a benchmark for a new ECE diagnostic system. This work is about the development, optimization, construction and application of an ECE diagnostic for TJ-K. Modeling, simulation and experiment are combined to understand the processes at the specific experiment and to adapt the setup to these conditions. The first part of this thesis describes the development and test of the diagnostic. To this end, the transport and propagation of electron cyclotron radiation is simulated in the three-dimensionally modeled plasma of TJ-K. From the results, an optimization approach is derived: with a suitably positioned and optimally curved mirror for defined reflections, a tunable resonator system is built that improves the localization of the measurements significantly. After identification of the measurement signals as ECE opposed to thermal bremsstrahlung, the measurement system is calibrated with the hot-cold method. Although only about 0.2 % of the black body intensity is emitted from the optically thin plasma the temperatures obtained from the ECE diagnostic could be verified by Langmuir probe measurements. In the second part, numerical investigations of electron trajectories in the 3D magnetic field of TJ-K are employed to study their dependence on the kinetic particle energy. The trajectories form drift orbits which depend on the speed and orientation of the electron compared to the magnetic field. To what extent electrons on larger drift orbits collide with the vessel wall and thus contribute to toroidal net currents is investigated using simulations with different velocity distributions. It becomes apparent that especially electron populations additional to the thermal distribution at higher energies like for instance 1 keV, superthermal electrons, can result in large toroidal net currents. Already thermal electrons with typical energies of 10 eV provide numerically toroidal net currents that are comparable to the experimentally observed currents. The installed ECE diagnostic allows for temporally resolved measurements of local radiation temperatures for correlation with toroidal net currents