RESUMEN
Polarization of drift-Alfvén waves, defined as the ratio of electrostatic to electromagnetic fluctuations, has remained unmeasurable in fusion plasmas for decades, despite its pivotal role in understanding wave dynamics and their impact on plasmas. We report the first measurements of drift-Alfvén wave polarization in a hot, magnetically confined plasma. The breakthrough is enabled by a novel methodology developed from gyrokinetic theory, utilizing fluctuations of electron temperature and density. Analysis of data from the DIII-D tokamak reveals that the waves above the geodesic acoustic mode frequency exhibit dominant electromagnetic polarization, whereas lower-frequency waves show a mix of electromagnetic and electrostatic polarization, indicating a strong coupling between shear Alfvén waves and drift-acoustic waves.
RESUMEN
A new time-delay estimation (TDE) technique based on dynamic programming is developed to measure the time-varying time-delay between two signals. The dynamic programming based TDE technique provides a frequency response five to ten times better than previously known TDE techniques, namely, those based on time-lag cross-correlation or wavelet analysis. Effects of frequency spectrum, signal-to-noise ratio, and amplitude of time-delay on response of the TDE technique (represented as transfer function) are studied using simulated data signals. The transfer function for the technique decreases with increase in noise in signal; however it is independent of signal spectrum shape. The dynamic programming based TDE technique is applied to the beam emission spectroscopy diagnostic data to measure poloidal velocity fluctuations, which led to the observation of theoretically predicted zonal flows in high-temperature tokamak plasmas.