New high-field side magnetic probe array system for three-dimensional magnetic fluctuation measurements on EAST

To better study the magnetic fluctuations in the high-field side of EAST tokamak, a new high-field side magnetic probe array (HFS-MPA) has been developed on EAST recently. The HFS-MPA consists of 12 identical three-dimensional (3D) magnetic probes, which are mounted on the HFS wall with carefully designed arrangement. The HFS-MPA magnetic probes bring additional toroidal magnetic fluctuation measurements compared with the HFS regular magnetic probes which can only provide poloidal and radial magnetic fluctuation measurements. The upper limits of frequency and toroidal mode number (n) measurements of the magnetic fluctuations have been improved by comparing HFS-MPA with the HFS regular magnetic probes, i.e., 650 kHz vs 100 kHz and n = 23 vs n = 1. In developing the HFS-MPA diagnostic system, many practical challenges have been overcome and many special designs have been developed. These will be mentioned in the main subsystem description of the HFS-MPA diagnostic in this paper, which might be useful for developing new magnetic probe diagnostics in the future on EAST or other magnetically confined fusion devices. The calibration of the effective area and frequency response of the HFS-MPA is also described. The preliminary application in studying the frequency and propagation characteristics of the magnetic fluctuations with HFS-MPA compared with EAST regular magnetic probes shows that the HFS-MPA is well developed for plasma physics studies.