Glossary of TPC Utilities and TFTR Jargon

BES

The Beam Emission Spectroscopy diagnostic on TFTR which measures density fluctuations.

CHERS

The charge-exchange recomdination spectrometer diagnostic which measures the T_i and profiles in TFTR.

COE

Chief operating Engineer in the TFTR control room, responsible for programming of the toroidal field and other power supplies.

CUPLOT

An interactive program that can display a variety of data acquired from TFTR including waveforms and 1-D and 2-D Ufiles.

DIGRAPH

The original data acquisition system used on TFTR consisted of Gould SEL computers which allowed only short file names. For this reason the only two ascii characters could be reserved to identify the data files written for a particular diagnostic, and so each diagnostic been come to be known by its associated ``digraph''. For example, the digraph for the MIRI diagnostic (multiple far infared interferometer) which measures density profiles is FM. For a listing of TFTR digraphs and what they mean, see Appendix B of the ``Accessing TFTR Data'' document.

HLDAS Operator

Physicist responsible for overseeing the collection of diagnostic data during an experiment. The HLDAS operator typically uses: ISC, YPLOT, SNAP, and CUPLOT to examine the incoming data. This is a great job. If you would like to be a HLDAS operator, contact Steve Scott, sscott@pppl.gov.

ISC

A program which automatically adds about 100 waveform values at about 10 selected times for each TFTR shot to a large waveform database table (WAVEF). Selected plots, e.g., beam power vs shot number) are automatically updated in the TFTR Control Room.

LOCUS

A PPPL-developed database program, based on the commercial INGRES database software, which is widely used to display and analyze TFTR databases.

MINGL

A PPPL-developed database entry program which allows the user to conveniently generate databases from a wide variety of standard PPPL data-file types, including waveforms, 1-D and 2-D ufiles, and SNAP and TRANSP transport results.

MSE

The Motional Stark Effect diagnostic on TFTR which measures the q-profile.

NBOE

Neutral-beam operating engineer. This is the engineer in charge of the neutral beams in the TFTR control room. The Session Leader works closely with the NBOE during the course of an experiment to define which neutral beams should fire; beam timing, and beam isotope (deuterium/tritium).

OperLog

A program used by the Physics Operator to record comments about TFTR shots in a Physics Operator Log database.

OperLook

An interactive program used by everyone to display the current contents of the Physics Operator Log database.

OperPrint

A program that prints out contents of the Physics Operator log from previous run days.

Physics Operator

(Also called the Physicist in Charge) Physicist in charge of controlling the plasma current waveform, gas puffing, and other parameters of a shot. The Session leader works closely with the Physics Operator throughout an experiment.

Session Leader

The person, usually a physicist in the TFTR control room, who directs an experiment. He or she is expected to nominally follow the experimental plan described in a written experimental proposal (see ``XP'') and as succintly summarized in a proposed ``shot list'' which is distributed a day or so before the experiment is carried out.

SNAP

A steady-state 1-D transport analysis code. Typically run at one time point on every high-priority shot during an experiment to verify that all of the transport diagnostics are functioning properly.

TaskLog

The program used by the Task Force Leader (TFL) to enter comments and shot parameters about the current day's TFTR shots into a database.

TaskLook

A interactive program that displays the automaticaly-updated TFL run summary from the TaskLog database.

TaskPrint

A program that prints out the contents of any day's run comments from the TaskLog database to a printer or terminal screen.

Task Force Leader

This term unfortunately is ambiguous. In recent years, the TFTR experimentists have been grouped into 4-5 ``task forces'' each focused on studying some aspect of tokamak physics. The leader of each task force is called, surprise, the task force leader.

However, in previous years, the person actually controlling a particular experiment from the TFTR control room was called the task force leader (this position is now called the session leader, but many of us still refer to the session leader as the task force leader).

Tritium Shift Supervisor

Engineer in the TFTR control room ultimately responsible for movement and use of tritium during an experiment. The session leader works closely with the Tritium Shift Supervisor to request tritium delivery to particular neutral beam sources, tritium gas puffs, etc.

Waveforms

1-D vectors compiled from various diagnostics for each TFTR shot into a file which remains on-line for at least 3 years.

XP

Formally, this is a 5-20 page ``experimental proposal'' that describes a proposed experiment in detail. Informally, it is used to designate the experiment itself, e.g. ``We're doing XP619 today.''

YPLOT

A program used by the HLDAS operator to display a large number of waveforms automatically after each shot on screens in the TFTR control room. Typically each screen displays 4-10 waveforms on each of eight screens.