High brightness potassium ion gun for the HIF Neutralized Transport Experiment (NTX)

The NTX experiment at the Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory is exploring the performance of neutralized final focus systems for high perveance heavy ion beams. To focus a high intensity beam to a small spot requires a high brightness beam. In the NTX experiment, a potassium ion beam of up to 400 keV and 80 mA is generated in a Pierce type diode. At the diode exit, an aperture with variable size provides the capability to vary the beam perveance and to significantly reduce the beam emittance. We shall report on the gun characterization including current density profile, phase space distributions and the control of electrons generated by the beam scraping at the aperture. Comparison with particle simulations using the EGUN code will be presented.