High brightness immersed source injector characterization

Experimental and theoretical work have demonstrated that a proper injector design results in the generation of very-high-brightness beams in a field-immersed foilless diode source which is suitable for use on RADLAC II (a high-current linear induction accelerator for electrons). Time-resolved characterization of the high-brightness immersed diode source was achieved using a time-gated 2-D X-ray imaging technique. The experiments were performed on the 4-MeV IBEX accelerator and produced currents exceeding 40 kA in a 6-mm-radius, thin annular beam with a measured thermal transverse velocity of 0.1 c. For currents of 30 kA, even brighter beams with β=0.07 were obtained. At lower currents, beams as small as 2 mm in radius were produced with a smaller cathode tip. In all cases, the measured parameters were consistent with 2-D, PIC (particle-in-cell) simulations