Specifications include, but are not limited to: The department of Engineering Physics is looking to purchase a Thomson Scattering Laser. The new laser will be located at the Helically Symmetric eXperiment (HSX) in the Engineering Hall building, room 1550. The laser will be used to infer electron temperatures and densities inside high temperature plasmas of HSX. By interacting with plasma electrons, the photons of the intense laser beam will scatter off and can then be detected with characteristic Doppler shifts and intensities. Thanks to a high repetition rate of 400 Hz the new laser will allow for studies of electron temperature and density profiles in HSX at multiple time points during a single plasma experiment. Moreover, the new laser has a higher energy compared to the 20 years old single pulse laser employed so far, which will significantly increase the diagnostic’s signal to noise ratio.
