Abstract

As for other tokamaks, spectroscopy of the plasma produced in the Texas Experimental Tokamak (TEXT) has resulted in significant contributions to both atomic and plasma physics. The identification of magnetic and electric dipole transitions in highly ionized species allowed the determination of energy levels while increasing the availability of emission lines for plasma experiments and for use as standards in other atomic physics studies. Collisional rate measurements provided benchmarks for atomic theory and the basic data for implementation of some plasma diagnostics. Complementing the usual plasma physics role as a tool in the study of impurity behavior or ion energy transport, spectroscopy is now also employed in the study of plasma turbulence, MHD stability, and the nonthermal effects of rf heating. As accuracy requirements for some of these measurements increase, active spectroscopic techniques are displacing the familiar passive ones. The experiments which illustrate this review were all conducted on TEXT and are the work of physicists from a number of laboratories. They are chosen to emphasize advances in physics and to describe the critical role of spectroscopy in plasma physics.

© 1988 Optical Society of America