CERN Accelerating science

Article
Title	A Fast Faraday Cup for the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment
Author(s)	Sefkow, Adam ; Bieniosek, Frank ; Coleman, Joshua E ; Davidson, Ronald C ; Efthimion, Philip ; Eylon, Shmuel ; Gilson, Erik P ; Greenway, Wayne ; Henestroza, Enrique ; Kwan, Joe W ; Roy, Prabir K ; Vanecek, David ; Waldron, William ; Welch, Dale ; Yu, Simon
Affiliation	(ATK-MR, Albuquerque, New Mexico) ; (LBNL, Berkeley) ; (PPPL, Princeton, New Jersey)
Publication	2005
In:	21st IEEE Particle Accelerator Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA, 16 - 20 May 2005, pp.3765
Subject category	Accelerators and Storage Rings
Abstract	Heavy ion drivers for high energy density physics applications and inertial fusion energy use space-charge-dominated beams which require longitudinal bunch compression in order to achieve sufficiently high beam intensity at the target. The Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-1A (NDCX-1A) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is used to determine the effective limits of neutralized drift compression. NDCX-1A investigates the physics of longitudinal drift compression of an intense ion beam, achieved by imposing an initial velocity tilt on the drifting beam and neutralizing the beam's space-charge with background plasma. Accurately measuring the longitudinal compression of the beam pulse with high resolution is critical for NDCX-1A, and an understanding of the accessible parameter space is modeled using the LSP particle-in-cell (PIC) code. The design and preliminary experimental results for an ion beam probe which measures the total beam current at the focal plane as a function of time are summarized.