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Potential roles for heavy negative ions as driver beams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2004

L.R. GRISHAM
L.R. GRISHAM
Affiliation:
Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
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Abstract

We have performed an initial assessment of the feasibility of producing heavy negative ion beams as drivers for an inertial confinement fusion reactor. Negative ion beams offer the potentially important advantages relative to positive ions that they will not draw electrons from surfaces and the target chamber plasma during acceleration, compression, and focusing, and they will not have a low energy tail. Intense negative ion beams could also be efficiently converted to atomically neutral beams by photodetachment prior to entering the target chamber. Depending on the target chamber pressure, this atomic beam will undergo ionization as it crosses the chamber, but at chamber pressures at least as high as 1.3 × 10−4 torr, there may still be significant improvements in the beam spot size on the target, due to the reduction in path-averaged self-field perveance. The halogens, with their large electron affinities, are the best negative ion candidates. Fluorine and chlorine are the easiest halogens to use for near-term source experiments, whereas bromine and iodine best meet present expectations of driver mass. With regard to ion sources and photodetachment neutralizers, this approach should be feasible with existing technology. Except for the target chamber, the vacuum requirements for accelerating and transporting high energy negative ions are essentially the same as for positive ions.

Keywords

HalogensHIFNegative ionsNeutral atomic beamPhoto detachment
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 545 - 548
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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