For over 30 yrs, neutral lithium beams have been employed as a localized, noninvasive diagnostic on a variety of plasma experiments worldwide, providing a number of key physics measurements. On DIII-D the LIBEAM diagnostic has been designed to provide precise measurements of the local poloidal magnetic field in the edge region, a parameter of basic importance to understanding the stability of high performance tokamaks. We utilize the Zeeman splitting and known polarization characteristics of the collisionally excited 670.8 nm Li resonance line to interpret local magnetic field components viewed using a closely packed (DeltaRsimilar to5 mm) array of 32 view chords. A dual photoelastic modulator/linear polarizer combination serves to amplitude modulate the light in exact correspondence to its input polarization state. Subsequent narrowband spectral filtering using etalons and standard interference filters is used to isolate one of the three Zeeman components, and the polarization state of that component is recovered using a PC-based, multichannel digital lock-in detection system. Edge magnetic pitch angle profiles for a variety of shots have been reconstructed using a small number of chords and detailed analysis of the lock-in and dc signal levels. Present system performance appears to be limited by etalon performance as well as various broadening mechanisms in the beam that tend to decrease the polarization fraction in the observed component. A careful analysis of this effect and some strategies for improving the measured polarization will be presented. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics. References: 17
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