Space charge compensation studies of hydrogen ion beams in a drift section

Demands of high intensity beams are increasing for material science and engineering applications. To control the high intensity beam dynamics, the nonlinear space charge forces, produced by the beam and the residual plasma at low energy, have to be carefully studied. Interactions between the beam and the residual gas tend to neutralize the beam space charge. The temporal and spatial evolutions of these interactions complicate the beam dynamics, even into a drift section. A 1.5D (xy for motion, r for space charge) PIC code, cartago, has been written in order to simulate the beam dynamics in a low energy beam transport line including the space charge compensation effects. This paper relates the structure and the numerical methods used in the code and shows studies of the space charge compensation regime for H⁺ and H^- beams in a drift section.