Error analysis for thermonuclear plasma bolometric measurements performed with widely used miniaturized metal resistor detectors

A general qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experimental and numerical errors which affect the plasma total radiated power measurements performed in thermonuclear fusion experiments with widely used miniaturized low-noise metal resistor bolometers is presented in this paper. This analysis, which generalizes the results of previous work on the detection limit, is motivated by the fact that, by means of bolometric tomography, detailed reconstruction of the radiated power emissivity distributions, in particular during fast phenomena, requires a high level of precision in the raw measurement and then a thorough control of the error sources. Since these bolometers are widely used in the largest tokamak, RFP and Stellarator experiments and are also considered for the reference design of the bolometric diagnostics in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the study presented here has been accomplished in a machine-independent way. Practical formulae and methods to estimate the experimental errors that do not depend on the magnetic configuration are presented.