Two-dimensional plasma density evolution local to the inversion layer during sawtooth crash events using beam emission spectroscopy

We present methods for analyzing Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES) data to obtain the plasma density evolution associated with rapid sawtooth crash events at the DIII-D tokamak. BES allows coverage over a 2D spatial plane, inherently local measurements, with fast time responses, and, therefore, provides a valuable new channel for data during sawtooth events. A method is developed to remove sawtooth-induced edge-light pulses contained in the BES data. The edge light pulses appear to be from the Dα emission produced by edge recycling during sawtooth events, and are large enough that traditional spectroscopic filtering and data analysis techniques are insufficient to deduce physically meaningful quantities. A cross-calibration of 64 BES channels is performed by using a novel method to ensure accurate measurements. For the large-amplitude density oscillations observed, we discuss and use the non-linear relationship between the BES signal δI/I0 and the plasma density variation δne/ne0. The 2D BES images cover an 8 × 20 cm2 region around the sawtooth inversion layer and show large-amplitude density oscillations, with additional significant spatial variations across the inversion layer that grows and peaks near the time of the temperature crash. The edge light removal technique and method of converting large-amplitude δI/I0 to δne/ne0 presented here may help analyze other impulsive MHD phenomena in tokamaks.