Experiments at the Virtual National Laboratory for Heavy Ion Fusion

An overview of experiments is presented, in which the physical dimensions, transverse emittance and generalized perveance are scaled to explore driver-relevant beam dynamics. Among these are beam merging, focusing to a small spot, and bending and recirculating beams. The Virtual National Laboratory for Heavy Ion Fusion (VNL) is also developing two driver-scale beam experiments involving heavy-ion beams with Ibeam∼1 A to provide guidance for the design of an Integrated Research Experiment (IRE) for driver system studies within the next 5 years. Multiple-beam sources and injectors are being designed and a one-beam module will be built and tested. Another experimental effort will be the transport of such a beam through ∼100 magnetic quadrupoles. The experiment will determine transport limits at high aperture fill factors, beam halo formation, and the influence on beam properties of secondary electron production and neutral atom desorption from the vacuum pipe wall. Research into driver technology will be briefly presented, including the development of ferromagnetic core materials, induction core pulsers, multiple-beam quadrupole arrays and plasma channel formation experiments for pinched transport in reactor chambers.