Iterative reconstruction methods and the resolution principle for fast-ion loss detector measurements

Fast-ion loss detectors (FILDs) are crucial for analyzing fast-ion dynamics in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. A core challenge is to derive an accurate ion velocity distribution, requiring treatment of thousands of remapped camera frames for a full discharge. The ill-posed nature of this task necessitates regularization with a well-chosen regularization parameter and computationally efficient methods. In this work, we introduce the ‘resolution principle,’ a novel criterion for selecting the optimal regularization parameter, providing a distinction between genuine features and artefacts smaller than the diagnostic resolution in the reconstruction, thereby preventing misinterpretations. This principle, coupled with three iterative reconstruction techniques—Kaczmarz’s method, coordinate descent, and Cimmino’s method—demonstrates enhanced reconstruction capabilities compared to conventional methods like Tikhonov regularization. Utilizing these techniques allows rapid processing of measurements from full discharges, removing the computational bottleneck and facilitating between-discharge reconstructions. By reconstructing 6000 camera frames from an ELMy H-mode discharge at ASDEX Upgrade, we capture the temporal evolution of gyroradii and pitch angles, unveiling a direct correlation between pitch-angle behavior and changes in the toroidal magnetic field for a specific subset of lost ions accelerated by edge-localized modes (ELMs) to energies approximately twice that of the injection energy.