The effects of relativistic broadening and frequency down-shift on electron–cyclotron emission measurements in EAST

This paper presents a theoretical calculation of the effects of relativistic broadening and frequency down-shift on the electron cyclotron emission measurements for a wide range of plasma parameters in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The calculation is based on the radiation transfer equation, with the reabsorption and reemission processes taken into account. The broadening effect contributes to the radial resolution of the measurement, and the calculation results indicate that it is ～2 cm in the case of the central electron temperature 10 keV. A pseudo radial displacement of the obtained electron temperature profile occurs if the relativistic frequency down-shift effect is not taken into account in the determination of the emission layer position. The shift could be a few centimeters as the electron temperature increases, and this effect should be taken into account.