Performance of a carbon plasma stripper for intense beams

By irradiation of a polyethylene disk with a 3-J TEA CO2 laser, a surface blow-off plasma was created. This plasma acted as a stripper medium for a beam of singly ionized lithium at 0.9 MeV incident energy. Stripping to 3+ could be shown on a timescale characteristic for the expansion of the ablated matter into the volume occupied by the beam.