Generation of intense pulsed heavy ion beam by bipolar pulse accelerator

A new type of pulsed ion beam accelerator named “bipolar pulse accelerator (BPA)” has been proposed in order to improve the purity of intense pulsed ion beams. To confirm the principle of the BPA, we developed a bipolar pulse generator, which consists of a Marx generator and a pulse forming line (PFL) with a rail gap switch on its end. In this article, we report the experimental result of the bipolar pulse and evaluate the electrical characteristics of the bipolar pulse generator. When the bipolar pulse generator was operated at 70 % of the full charge condition of the PFL, the bipolar pulse with the first (−138 kV, 72 ns) and the second pulse (+130 kV, 70 ns) was successfully obtained. The evaluation of the electrical characteristics indicates that the developed generator can produce the bipolar pulse with fast rise time and sharp reversing time. At present the bipolar pulse generator is installed in the By type magnetically insulated ion diode and we carry out the experiment on the production of an intense pulsed ion beam by the bipolar pulse accelerator.