Polarimetric Thomson scattering measurements in Joint European Torus high temperature plasmas

Thomson scattered light is polarized in the same orientation as the incident laser beam at low electron temperatures (T_e). At high T_e, part of the spectrum begins to become randomly polarized due to relativistic reasons. First measurements of the depolarized Thomson scattering spectrum were obtained from Joint European Torus (JET) pulses in 2016. This paper builds upon these initial measurements with the data obtained during 2021. These new measurements improve upon first results, in particular, by obtaining spectral measurements of the depolarized spectrum. The recent JET campaign was well suited to these measurements with long and hot plasmas. The resulting data are averaged over many plasmas and laser pulses to obtain a measurement of the amount of "p" and "s" scattered light as a function of T_e. This experimentally obtained d(p/s)/dT_e is then fitted and found to show reasonable agreement with the theoretically predicted depolarized fraction. Error estimates on the measured "p/s" have been obtained and show that the measurements are meaningful. This is good news for ITER for which the intention is to use this measurement as a check on T_e determined by the core plasma Thomson scattering diagnostic by using conventional spectral measurement techniques.