Time-frequency analysis of nonstationary complex magneto-hydro-dynamics in fusion plasma signals using the Choi-Williams distribution

Abstract The Choi–Williams distribution is applied to the time–frequency analysis of signals describing rapid magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) modes and events in tokamak plasmas. A comparison is made with Soft X-ray (SXR) signals as well as Mirnov signal that shows the advantages of the Choi–Williams distribution over both continuous wavelets transform scalogram and the short-time Fourier transform spectrogram. Examples of MHD activities in HT-7 and EAST tokamak are shown, namely the onset of coupling tearing modes, high frequency precursors of sawtooth, and low frequency MHD instabilities in edge localized mode (ELM) free in H mode discharge.