Thomson Scattering Measurements During Local Helicity Injection in the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment

Local helicity injection (LHI) is a non-solenoidal startup technique currently being developed at the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment. In LHI, helicity is injected by compact, high-power current sources located in the plasma scrape off layer that drive bulk plasma current through magnetic reconnection. Investigations of the electron temperature and density evolution in LHI plasmas are being pursued using the multi-point Thomson scattering diagnostic on Pegasus. It has been expanded to provide a total of 24 spatial channels using a set of three high-throughput transmission gratings and intensified CCD cameras. Measurements have been made in two separate helicity injector configurations: a low-field-side (outboard midplane) configuration; and a high-field-side (lower divertor) configuration. Initial observations during injection showed $50