Comparison of unfolding methods for the inference of runaway electron energy distribution from gamma-ray spectroscopic measurements

• Unfolding techniques are employed to reconstruct the 1D energy distribution of runaway electrons from Bremsstrahlung hard X-ray spectrum emitted during plasma disruptions in tokamaks. Here we compare four inversion methods: truncated singular value decomposition, which is a linear algebra technique, maximum likelihood expectation maximization, which is an iterative method, and Tikhonov regularization applied to chi(2) and Poisson statistics, which are two minimization approaches. The reconstruction fidelity and the capability of estimating cumulative statistics, such as the mean and maximum energy, have been assessed on both synthetic and experimental spectra. The effect of measurements limitations, such as the low energy cut and few number of counts, on the final reconstruction has also been studied. We find that the iterative method performs best as it better describes the statistics of the experimental data and is more robust to noise in the recorded spectrum.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Acceleratorfysik och instrumentering (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Fusion, plasma och rymdfysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Nuclear instruments and methods for hot plasma diagnostics

Plasma diagnostics - interferometry

spectroscopy and imaging

Analysis and statistical methods

Plasma diagnostics - charged-particle spectroscopy

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)