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The University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER) is a low energy, high current recirculator for beam physics research. The electron beam current is adjustable from 0.7 mA, an emittance dominated beam, to 100 mA, a strongly space charge dominated beam. UMER is addressing issues in beam physics relevant to many applications that require intense beams of high quality such as advanced concept accelerators, free electron lasers, spallation neutron sources, and future heavy-ion drivers for inertial fusion. The primary focus of this presentation is experimental results and improvements in multi-turn operation of the electron ring. Results of high current, space charge dominated multi-turn transport will also be presented.

Beams with a high phase space density are useful for many modern applications such as free electron lasers, pulsed neutron sources, high-energy-density physics, and high-luminosity colliders. Production of such beams requires understanding the complex space charge dynamics at the low-energy end of the accelerator. The University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER) has been designed and built with the purpose of investigating space charge effects using scaled low-energy electron experiments. We have recently circulated the highest- space-charge beam in a ring to date, achieving a breakthrough both in the number of turns and in the amount of current propagated. We have propagated a beam with an integer tune shift for over 100 turns, and other, even higher-current beams, for 5-50 turns albeit with some beam loss. One beam had a tune shift at injection of 5.0, which is several factors higher than anything propagated in the past. We report here as well on other interesting aspects of the UMER work.

The University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER) is a low energy, high current recirculator for beam physics research. The electron storage ring has been closed and recent operations have been focused on achieving multi- turn transport. An entire suite of terminal diagnostics is available for time-resolved phase space measurements of the beam. These diagnostics have been mounted and tested at several points on the ring before it was closed and will complete the ring when mounted to the extraction section. UMER utilizes a unique injection scheme which uses the fringe fields of an offset quadrupole to assist a pulsed dipole in bending the beam into the ring. Similar concepts, along with a more traditional electrostatic method, are being considered for beam extraction. This presentation will focus on the recent efforts to design and deploy these major subsystems required for beam extraction.