Modelling and Measurements of MAST Neutron Emission

Abstract: Measurements of neutron emission from a fusion plasma can provide a wealth of information on the underlying temporal, spatial and energy distributions of reacting ions and how they are affected by a wide range of magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) instabilities.This thesis focuses on the interpretation of the experimental measurements recorded by neutron flux monitors with and without spectroscopic capabilities installed on the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST). In particular, the temporally and spatially resolved measurements of the neutron rate measured by the neutron camera, which also possesses spectroscopic capabilities, are combined with the temporally resolved measurements of the total neutron rate provided by the absolutely calibrated fission chamber in order to study the properties of the fast ion distributions in different plasma scenarios.The first part of the thesis describes in detail the two forward modelling methods, which employ the set of interconnected codes developed to interpret experimental observations such as neutron count rate profiles and recoil proton pulse height spectra provided by the neutron camera. In the second part of the thesis the developed methods are applied to model the neutron camera observations performed in a variety of plasma scenarios. The first method, which involves only TRANSP/NUBEAM and LINE2 codes, was used to validate the neutron count rate profiles measured by the neutron camera in three different plasma scenarios covering the wide range of total neutron rate typically observed on MAST. In addition, the first framework was applied to model the changes in the total and local neutron rates caused by fishbone instability as well as to estimate the Hydrogen and Deuterium ion ratio. The second modelling method, which involves TRANSP/NUBEAM, LINE2, DRESS and NRESP, was used to validate the measured recoil proton pulse height spectra in a MHD-quiescent plasma scenario.