A computational tool for simulation and design of tangential multi-energy soft x-ray pin-hole cameras for tokamak plasmas

A new tool has been developed to calculate the spectral, spatial, and temporal responses of multi-energy soft x-ray (ME-SXR) pinhole cameras for arbitrary plasma densities (n_e,D), temperature (T_e), and impurity densities (n_Z). ME-SXR imaging provides a unique opportunity for obtaining important plasma properties (e.g., T_e, n_Z, and Z_eff) by measuring both continuum and line emission in multiple energy ranges. This technique employs a pixelated x-ray detector in which the lower energy threshold for photon detection can be adjusted independently. Simulations assuming a tangential geometry and DIII-D-like plasmas (e.g., n_e,0 ≈ 8 × 10¹⁹ m^-3 and T_e,0 ≈ 2.8 keV) for various impurity (e.g., C, O, Ar, Ni, and Mo) density profiles have been performed. The computed brightnesses range from few 10² counts pixel^-1 ms^-1 depending on the cut-off energy thresholds, while the maximum allowable count rate is 10⁴ counts pixel^-1 ms^-1. The typical spatial resolution in the mid-plane is ≈0.5 cm with a photon-energy resolution of 500 eV at a 500 Hz frame rate.