Experimental investigation of ion beam transport in a laser initiated high current discharge channel

Summary form only given. The transport of space charge dominated ion beams is of interest to many applications using high power particle beams. The most challenging demands are found in the field of ion beam driven inertial confinement fusion. Motivated by this application the space charge and current neutralized beam focusing and transport in gas discharge plasmas has been under investigation for a number of years. Paralleled by engineering design work of a modified HILIFE II reactor with discharge channel based final beam transport, and by experimental investigations of laser initiated high current discharges at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) the ion optical properties of such a channel will be studied for the first time with a heavy ion beam at GSI.