High current ion sources and injectors for induction linacs in heavy ion fusion

Heavy ion beam driven inertial fusion requires short ion beam pulses with high current and high brightness. Depending on the beam current and the number of beams in the driver system, the injector can use a large diameter surface ionization source or merge an array of small beamlets from a plasma source. In this paper, we review the scaling laws that govern the injector design and the various ion source options including the contact ionizer, the aluminosilicate source, the multicusp plasma source, and the metal vapor vacuum arc (MEVVA) source.