Low intensity beam diagnostics with microchannel plate detectors

A non destructive low intensity ion beam profile monitor has been designed and tested. The system is based on a MCP that detects the residual gas ionization produced by the ion beam. The detector is coupled to a phosphorous screen for the readout of the vertical and horizontal density profiles. Experimental results have shown that the system is able to detect beam intensities as low as 10⁸ pps with a local vacuum in the measuring box of the order of 8×10^-6 mbar. In the paper we report the results so far obtained in beam sensitivity and measure precision as a function of the residual pressure and in different regimes of the detector