Multiple discharge channels in a cascaded arc to produce extreme hydrogen plasma beams

A high flux cascaded arc hydrogen plasma source is being developed for the linear plasma generator Magnum-PS I (magnetised plasma generator and numerical modeling for plasma surface interaction studies). Magnum-PSI will be the heart of the PSI-lab at the FOM-Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen and is being developed to investigate PSI issues for ITER. Especially the wall material of the so-called divertor of ITER, which is the region where plasma and impurities are neutralized and pumped off, will receive unprecedented particle and power loads. The expected numbers are: particle fluxes of up to 1024 ions/m²s and power loads of up to 10 MW/m2. We have demonstrated that it is possible to produce such conditions in a linear plasma generator with a cascaded arc in a magnetic field of 1.6 T². The diameter of the plasma beam in these experiments was typically 20 mm. For Magnum-PSI, we envisage a beam diameter of 10 cm in order to enter the strongly coupled regime of PSI research. In this contribution we investigate the production of larger beam diameters by combining the output of several discharge channels. A new arc consisting of three separate arc channels with a common cylinder anode was constructed for this purpose. Thomson scattering, high resolution Doppler spectroscopy and calorimetry were applied to measure the performance of and interaction between the three channels.