Measurement of divertor surface heat flux by infra-red thermographic inversion in ST40

Diagnostic tools for understanding the edge plasma behavior in fusion devices are essential. The main focus of the present work is to present the infra-red (IR) diagnostics installed on Tokamak Energy's spherical tokamak (ST40) and the IR thermographic inversion tool, Functional Analysis of Heat Flux (FAHF). FAHF is designed for multi-2D thermographic inversions within the divertor tiles using the finite difference method and an explicit time stepping scheme. ST40's re-entrant endoscope allows the acquisition of IR data with the highest available effective spatial resolution. With these data, FAHF calculates the plasma perpendicular heat flux density on the divertor-a crucial quantity for edge plasma analysis. Although FAHF demonstrates significant sensitivity to user-selected settings, precise heat flux values are recoverable by ensuring a sufficiently high resolution. Implications for the optimal resolution of both the code and the IR diagnostic system are discussed. FAHF's simplifications are shown to give an error within 10% with respect to COMSOL Multiphysics® simulations. Finally, by means of comparison with Langmuir probe heat flux data, the accuracy of the FAHF heat fluxes is estimated to be satisfactory. As such, FAHF is proven to be a precise and accurate tool for IR thermographic inversions in ST40.