Beam dynamics of the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-II, a novel pulse-compressing ion accelerator
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550 (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08543 (United States)
Intense beams of heavy ions are well suited for heating matter to regimes of emerging interest. A new facility, NDCX-II, will enable studies of warm dense matter at approx1 eV and near-solid density, and of heavy-ion inertial fusion target physics relevant to electric power production. For these applications the beam must deposit its energy rapidly, before the target can expand significantly. To form such pulses, ion beams are temporally compressed in neutralizing plasma; current amplification factors of approx50-100 are routinely obtained on the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment (NDCX) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the NDCX-II physics design, an initial non-neutralized compression renders the pulse short enough that existing high-voltage pulsed power can be employed. This compression is first halted and then reversed by the beam's longitudinal space-charge field. Downstream induction cells provide acceleration and impose the head-to-tail velocity gradient that leads to the final neutralized compression onto the target. This paper describes the discrete-particle simulation models (one-, two-, and three-dimensional) employed and the space-charge-dominated beam dynamics being realized.
- OSTI ID:
- 21371214
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 17, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3292634; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Beam dynamics of the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-II (NDCX-II),a novel pulse-compressing ion accelerator
NDCX-II project commencing at LBNL