High speed movies of turbulence in Alcator C-Mod

A high speed (250 kHz), 300 frame charge coupled device camera has been used to image turbulence in the Alcator C-Mod Tokamak. The camera system is described and some of its important characteristics are measured, including time response and uniformity over the field-of-view. The diagnostic has been used in two applications. One uses gas-puff imaging to illuminate the turbulence in the edge/scrape-off-layer region, where D2 gas puffs localize the emission in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic field when viewed by the camera system. The dynamics of the underlying turbulence around and outside the separatrix are detected in this manner. In a second diagnostic application, the light from an injected, ablating, high speed Li pellet is observed radially from the outer midplane, and fast poloidal motion of toroidal striations are seen in the Li+ light well inside the separatrix.