Beam Transport Issues in High Current Linear Accelerators

Stable beam transport may be the limiting factor in the development of a new generation of high current linear induction accelerators. In this paper we analyze several important beam stability topics, including radial oscillations induced by an accelerating gap, the diocotron, resistive wall, and cyclotron maser instabilities, and the transverse beam breakup and image displacement instabilities. At present image displacement appears to represent the most serious limitation to high current beam transport in linear accelerator structures.