Drift compression and final focus systems for heavy ion inertial fusion

Longitudinal compression of space-charge dominated beams can be achieved by imposing a head-to-tail velocity tilt on the beam. This tilt has to be carefully tailored, such that it is removed by the longitudinal space-charge repulsion by the time the beam reaches the end of the drift compression section. The transverse focusing lattice should be designed such that all parts of the beam stay approximately matched, while the beam smoothly expands transversely to the larger beam radius needed in the final focus system following drift compression. In this thesis, several drift compression systems were designed within these constraints, based on a given desired pulse shape at the end of drift compression systems were designed within these constraints, based on a given desired pulse shape at the end of drift compression. The occurrence of mismatches due to a rapidly increasing current was analyzed. In addition, the sensitivity of drift compression to errors in the initial velocity tilt and current profile was studied. These calculations were done using a new computer code that accurately calculates the longitudinal electric field in the space-charge dominated regime

Results from the Scaled Final Focus Experiment

Vacuum ballistic focusing is the straightforward method to obtain a heavy ion beam spot size necessary to drive an inertial confinement fusion target. The beam is first expanded then focused to obtain the desired convergence angles at the exit of the last element. This is done in an attempt to achieve a focal spot size in which emittance is the limiting factor; however, aberrations and space charge will influence the spot radius. Proper scaling of particle energy, mass, beam current, beam emittance, and magnetic field replicates the dynamics of a full driver beam at the focus in a small laboratory experiment. By scaling the beam current to ~;100 mu A, 160 keV Cs+ has been used to study experimentally a proposed driver design at one-tenth scale. Once a nominal focal spot is achieved, the magnet strengths are deliberately de-tuned to simulate the effect of an off-momentum slice of the beam. Additionally, several methods will be used to inject electrons into beam following the last focusing element in order to study the neutralization of space charge and its effect on the focus. Transverse phase space and beam current density measurements at various stages of the focus will be presented as well spot size measurements from the various trials. This data will be compared to the results of a PIC model of the experiment

Results from the Scaled Final Focus Experiment

Vacuum ballistic focusing is the straightforward method to obtain a heavy ion beam spot size necessary to drive an inertial confinement fusion target. The beam is first expanded then focused to obtain the desired convergence angles at the exit of the last element. This is done in an attempt to achieve a focal spot size in which emittance is the limiting factor; however, aberrations and space charge will influence the spot radius. Proper scaling of particle energy, mass, beam current, beam emittance, and magnetic field replicates the dynamics of a full driver beam at the focus in a small laboratory experiment. By scaling the beam current to ~;100 mu A, 160 keV Cs+ has been used to study experimentally a proposed driver design at one-tenth scale. Once a nominal focal spot is achieved, the magnet strengths are deliberately de-tuned to simulate the effect of an off-momentum slice of the beam. Additionally, several methods will be used to inject electrons into beam following the last focusing element in order to study the neutralization of space charge and its effect on the focus. Transverse phase space and beam current density measurements at various stages of the focus will be presented as well spot size measurements from the various trials. This data will be compared to the results of a PIC model of the experiment