Phase space tomography of beams with extreme space charge

A common challenge for accelerator systems is to maintain beam quality and brightness over the usually long distance from the source to the target. In order to do so, knowledge of the beam distribution in both configuration and velocity space along the beam line is needed. However, measurement of the velocity distribution can be difficult, especially for beams with strong space charge. Here we present a simple and portable tomographic method to map the beam phase space, which can be used in the majority of accelerators. The tomographic reconstruction process has first been compared with results from simulations using the particle- in-cell code WARP. Results show excellent agreement even for beams with extreme space charge and exotic distributions. Our diagnostic has also been successfully demonstrated experimentally on the University of Maryland Electron Ring, a compact ring designed to study the transverse dynamics of beams in both emittance and space charge dominated regimes. Special emphasis is given to intense beams where our phase space tomography diagnostic is used to shed light on the consequences of the space charge forces on the transport of these beams.