Optical photography of the magnetically confined anode plasma source for repetitive intense ion beam generation

Summary form only given. Time resolved photographs of the visible light from the Magnetically Confined Anode Plasma (MAP) source for Ion Beam Surface Treatment (IBEST) are presented. The MAP source utilizes a fast (2 /spl mu/s rise time) magnetic field to create a plasma in a radically injected disc shaped gas puff and subsequently inject this plasma into the accelerating gap of a l0-cm-radius high power pulsed extraction ion diode. The 600 kV, 10 kA, 100 ns duration pulse for the beam is generated by a marx generator, cable feed, and linear induction voltage adder. The application of this technology is the generation of repetitively pulsed ion beams for government and industrial treatment of metal and polymer surfaces. Photographs of the MAP plasma were taken with an IMACON framing camera along the radial, axial, and azimuthal directions with a variety of gases and gas puff timings, using exposures as short as 10 ns. The photographs show a wealth of complex <1 mm luminous structures in the plasma.