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Using curved electrodes in the injector, an array of converging beamlets can produce a beam with the envelope radius, convergence, and ellipticity matched to an electrostatic quadrupole channel. Experimental results were in good quantitative agreement with the simulation and have demonstrated the feasibility of this concept. Based on this approach, the size of a driver-scale injector system will be reduced, so the success of this experiment has significant economical and technical impacts on the architecture of heavy-ion fusion drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a new approach to develop high current beams for heavy ion fusion, beam current at about 0.5 ampere per channel can be obtained by merging an array of high current density beamlets of 5 mA each. We have done computer simulations to study the transport of high current density beamlets and the emittance growth due to this merging process. In our radio frequency (rf) multicusp source experiment, we have produced a cluster of 61 beamlets using minimum gas flow. The current density from a 0.25 cm diameter aperture reached 100 mA/cm2. The normalized 4 rms emittance of 0.0186π mm mrad corresponds to an equivalent ion temperature of 2.08 eV. These results showed that the rf argon plasma source is suitable for producing high current density beamlets that can be merged to form a high current high brightness beam for heavy ion fusion application. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]