Progress in ion beam research at Sandia National Laboratories

Summary Form only given, as follows. Significant progress has been made recently in ion-beam production and focusing in both radial focusing and extraction geometries. Experiments on Sandia´s Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator (PBFA) II have demonstrated efficient ion-beam generation, with 0.6 MJ of ions produced with 80% ion efficiency on experiments at the 3/4 energy level. With the flashover ion sources presently used on PBFA II, approximately half of the ion are protons. Horizontal FWHM proton focuses of approximately 5 mm have been obtained at diode voltages of over 5 MV. Experiments have revealed a linear scaling of FWHM with anode-cathode gap. Experiments and simulations have provided important information on the effects of both solenoidal and self-field focusing in the diode. Extraction diode experiments have been conducted in support of Sandia´s light ion version of the US Department of Energy´s Laboratory Microfusion Facility (LMF). Results from diode experiments on the 0.7-TW Mite accelerator together with an improved understanding of diode operation provide a reasonable path to a 30-MV, 1.2-MA LMF module.<>