New Thomson scattering laser control for DIII-D

A Laser Control system has been built for the DIII-D Thomson Scattering Diagnostic. This new system has provided the capability to place the laser probe pulses with one microsecond timing precision throughout the DIII-D shot. The new system fires the eight lasers with a programmable sequence which repeats every 50 ms. If one wants to probe the plasma at a higher rate to study a fast paced event, the new control circuit can fire all charged lasers in rapid succession (BURST MODE). This burst rate is programmable. The new Laser Control system successfully replaced the previous control scheme which consisted of three VME Motorola 68030 computers one host under UNIX VME V/68 and two interrupt driven targets under VME Exec. The old system was not successful due to the many VME interrupts needed to service the lasers. The new hardware approach is much more reliable. The old system still controls data acquisition and as a monitoring system since it does not have the burden of controlling the lasers. A brief description of the Thomson Scattering diagnostic will be presented with emphasis in the new upgraded laser firing control system and data acquisition timing control.