Experiments on the Acceleration and Transport of Multi-Kiloampere Ion Beams

The Pulselac C accelerator is being constructed to study the properties of spacecharge-neutralized ion beams and to demonstrate the feasibility of controlling high ion fluxes. A gas-injection plasma gun has been developed which can supply over 50 A/cm2 of N+ or other intermediate mass ions. This source supplies ion flux for the magnetically insulated extraction gap. The source and extractor produce a 100 kV, 5 kA annular ion beam which propagates into a diagnostic region. Diagnostics, including a Thompson parabola mass spectrometer, a magnetic spectrometer, magnetically insulated detectors, and biased charge collectors, have proven the purity and uniformity of the beam and have given preliminary information on its propagation characteristics. Further experiments on the injector will include focusing using a toroidal lens and studies of beam aiming from the extractor gap. Two inductive post-acceleration stages, presently under construction, will increase the beam energy by 500 keV.