Acceleration Mechanisms in Single and Multiple Stage Collective Vacuum Diodes

Experimental measurements and numerical simulations are presented for a single stage vacuum diode collective accelerator in the geometry developed by Luce. 1 The acceleration experiment and diagnostics are shown in figure 1. Experimental results include measurement of a 5-10KA, 7.5MeV proton pulse with a driving electron beam of 55KA and 3.2MeV. The ion beam energy distribution is bunched at the peak energy but extends down to the e beam energy level. A few percent of the ions reach very high energies (~10Ee, Ee is the REB energy).