Measurements of magnetic field fluctuations using an array of Hall detectors on the TEXTOR tokamak

Hall detectors have been used to measure the magnetic field together with its' fluctuations in the boundary of a tokamak. The results show, that the measurements which have been performed so far, mainly by use of coils together with subsequent integration, either on-line or later by computer, can be substituted by Hall probe measurements giving the desired value of B directly. Because the integration of the coil signal becomes more and more difficult with long pulses, Hall detectors may give advantages in future fusion devices. We implemented a stack of nine Hall detectors mounted on three planes on a rod in such a way, that the three components of the magnetic field can be measured. To avoid capacitive and charge pickup from the plasma, the probes are electrically shielded. The damping due to skin effect within this shield has been taken into account. The probes have been calibrated using a known magnetic field of a straight wire driven with a LC bank. This field has been precisely measured with a Rogowski coil. The dependence of the Hall coefficient on the frequency has been measured and the pickup in the feeds due to B has been withdrawn from the results. We demonstrate the method with measurements on the TEXTOR tokamak, where we could clearly detect the small stray fields associated with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fluctuations. On TEXTOR we have been able to detect the MHD activity preceding discharge disruptions as well as the precursors of the so called sawteeth. The results are compared to those of other diagnostics on TEXTOR as, e.g., magnetic loops and electron cyclotron emission, and they do well compare. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.