Profiling Line-Averaged Compact Toroid Electron Density on CTIX With Arrayed Laser Deflectometry

The compact toroid (CT) injection experiment (CTIX) is a coaxial plasma rail gun originally designed for tokamak refueling. CTIX can form and accelerate CT plasmas of controllable densities and velocities. For a given chord through a plasma, changes in line-integrated transverse electron density gradient can be resolved by measuring the angle of deflection of a laser beam traversing the plasma. A vertical array of four temperature-controlled laser deflectometers was installed in the viewing section of CTIX and used to profile the line-averaged density of an unconstrained CT drifting at high velocity.