Collective Thomson scattering capabilities to diagnose fusion plasmas

Collective Thomson scattering (CTS) is a versatile technique for diagnosing fusion plasmas. In particular, experiments on diagnosing the ion temperature and fast ion velocity distribution have been executed on a number of fusion devices. In this article the main aim is to describe the technique, focusing on the measurements of fast ion dynamics in the tokamaks TEXTOR and ASDEX Upgrade. Other potential applications such as measurements of bulk ion temperature, bulk ion rotation, and fuel ion ratio measurements will be mentioned.