Studies of Turbulence and Flow in Magnetized Plasma Using Visible Light Imaging

Studies of phenomena like turbulence and flow have traditionally been performed by probes in the Large Plasma Device (LAPD) at UCLA. In this work a fast framing camera was used to image the fluctuations in visible light emissions. The camera was placed at one end of the LAPD and aimed through a window at a Langmuir probe in the plasma. The signals from a single pixel and the Langmuir probe were compared showing high correlation. While a probe can only study one spatial location at a time, the camera is able to capture two-dimensional information in a single time series giving a wealth of information and enabling a noninvasive study of the plasma. The camera data has been used to measure flow using time delay estimation and to calculate k-spectra of turbulent fluctuations.