Electro-optically modulated polarizing fourier–transform spectrometer for plasma spectroscopy applications

A new electro-optically modulated optical solid-state (MOSS) interferometer has been constructed for measurement of quantities related to the low-order spectral moments of line emission from optically thin radiant media such as plasmas. When Doppler broadening is dominant, the spectral moments give the Radon transform of corresponding moments of the velocity distribution function of the radiating species. The instrument, which is based on the principle of the Fourier-transform spectrometer, has high etendue and is rugged and compact. When electro-optical path-length modulation techniques are employed, the spectral information is encoded in the temporal frequency domain at harmonics of the modulation frequency and can be obtained by use of a single photodetector. Specifically, for a plasma in drifting local thermodynamic equilibrium the zeroth moment (brightness) is given by the average signal level, the first moment (shift) by the interferometric phase, and the second moment (linewidth) by the fringe visibility. To illustrate the MOSS performance, I present spectroscopic measurements of the time evolution of the plasma ion temperature and flow velocity for rf-heated discharges in the H-1 heliac, a toroidal plasma magnetic confinement at the Australian National University.