Design of hollow and strip beam guns

This paper covers a study of strip and hollow beam guns. An automatic electron trajectory tracer has been used to study the properties of the slit-anode lens common to these types of guns. A thin beam approximation was made so that a flat-bottom electrolytic tank could be used. The results of this study have been incorporated into gun design charts. Eight hollow beam guns have been built and tested experimentally. The experimental data of these guns compare favorably with the data obtained from the anode-lens study. The limitation of thermal velocities on the maximum area compression of strip and hollow beam guns is discussed. The experimental results of a focusing scheme which uses a uniform magnetic field to focus a hollow beam down concentric drift tubes are discussed.