Search Results (5 total)

Electron clouds limit the performance of many major accelerators and storage rings. Significant quantities of electrons result when halo ions are lost to beam tubes, generating gas which can be ionized and ion-induced electrons that can multiply and accumulate, causing degradation or loss of the ion beam. In order to understand the physical mechanisms of ion-induced electron production, experiments studied the impact of 50 to 400 keV K⁺ ions on stainless steel surfaces near grazing incidence, using the 500 kV ion source test stand (STS-500) at LLNL. The experimental electron yield scales with the electronic component (dE_e/dx) of the stopping power and its angular dependence does not follow 1/cos⁡(θ). A theoretical model is developed, using TRIM code to evaluate dE_e/dx at several depths in the target, to estimate the electron yield, which is compared with the experimental results. The experiment extends the range of energy from previous works and the model reproduces the angular dependence and magnitude of the electron yield.

Heavy ion drivers for heavy ion fusion and high energy density physics applications use space-charge-dominated ion beams which must undergo longitudinal bunch compression in order to meet the requisite beam intensities desired at the target. The Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-1A (NDCX-1A) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is used to determine the effective limits of neutralized drift compression, which occurs due to an imposed longitudinal velocity tilt on the drifting beam and subsequent neutralization of the beam’s space charge with background plasma. The accurate and temporally resolved measurement of the ion beam’s current and pulse length, which has been longitudinally compressed to a few nanoseconds duration at its focal plane, is a critical diagnostic. This paper describes the design and experimental results for a fast and accurate ion beam probe, which reliably measures the absolute beam current in the presence of high density plasma at the focal plane as a function of time. A particle-in-cell code has been used to model the propagation of the intense ion beam and to design the diagnostic probe.

The High Current Experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is part of the U.S. program to explore heavy-ion beam transport at a scale representative of the low-energy end of an induction linac driver for fusion energy production. The primary mission of this experiment is to investigate aperture fill factors acceptable for the transport of space-charge-dominated heavy-ion beams at high intensity (line charge density ∼0.2  μC/m) over long pulse durations (4  μs) in alternating gradient focusing lattices of electrostatic or magnetic quadrupoles. This experiment is testing transport issues resulting from nonlinear space-charge effects and collective modes, beam centroid alignment and steering, envelope matching, image charges and focusing field nonlinearities, halo, and electron and gas cloud effects. We present the results for a coasting 1 MeV K⁺ ion beam transported through ten electrostatic quadrupoles. The measurements cover two different fill factor studies (60% and 80% of the clear aperture radius) for which the transverse phase space of the beam was characterized in detail, along with beam energy measurements and the first halo measurements. Electrostatic quadrupole transport at high beam fill factor (≈80%) is achieved with acceptable emittance growth and beam loss, even though the initial beam distribution is not ideal (but the emittance is low) nor in thermal equilibrium. We achieved good envelope control, and rematching may only be needed every ten lattice periods (at 80% fill factor) in a longer lattice of similar design. We also show that understanding and controlling the time dependence of the envelope parameters is critical to achieving high fill factors, notably because of the injector and matching section dynamics.

High current and low emittance are principal requirements for heavy-ion injection into a linac driver for inertial fusion energy. An electrostatic quadrupole injector is capable of providing these high charge density and low emittance beams. We have modified the existing 2-MV injector to reduce beam emittance and to double the pulse length. We characterize the beam delivered by the modified injector to the High Current Transport Experiment and the effects of finite rise time of the extraction voltage pulse in the diode on the beam head. We demonstrate techniques for mitigating aberrations and reducing beam emittance growth in the injector.

A multibeamlet approach to a high current ion injector, whereby a large number of beamlets are accelerated and then merged to form a single beam, offers a number of potential advantages over a monolithic single beam injector. These advantages include a smaller transverse footprint, more control over the shaping and aiming of the beam, and more flexibility in the choice of ion sources. A potential drawback, however, is a larger emittance. In this paper, we seek to understand the merging of the beamlets and how it determines the emittance. When the constraints imposed by beam propagation physics and practical engineering issues are included, the design is reduced to a few free parameters. We describe the physics design of a multibeamlet injector and produce a design for an example set of parameters. Extensive use of 2D and 3D particle simulations was made in understanding the injector. Design tolerances and sensitivities are discussed in general and in relation to the example.