• R.F. Welton, S.N. Murray, M.P. Stockli
  ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
• R. Keller
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

The ion source developed for the Spallation Neutron Source* (SNS) is a radio frequency, multi-cusp source designed to produce ~ 40 mA of H^- with a normalized rms emittance of less than 0.2 pi mm mrad. To date the source has been utilized in the commissioning of the SNS accelerator, delivering beams of 10^-50 mA with duty-factors of typically ~0.1% for operational periods of several weeks and availabilities now ~99%. Ultimately the SNS facility will require beam duty-factors of 6% (1 ms pulse length, 60 Hz repetition rate, 21 day run-period). Over the last year, several experiments were performed in which the ion source was continuously operated at full duty-factor and maximum beam current on a dedicated test stand. Recently, a breakthrough in our understanding of the Cs release process has led to the development of a new source conditioning technique which resulted in a dramatic increase in beam persistence with time. Average H^- beam attenuation rates have been improved from ~5 mA/day to ~0.4 mA/day, allowing beams in excess of 30 mA to be delivered continuously at full duty factor for periods of ~20 days. Prior to this development, full duty factor beams could only be sustained for periods of several hours.

• R. Keller, P.A. Luft, M. T. Monroy, A. Ratti, M.J. Regis, D. L. Syversrud, J.G. Wallig
  LBNL, Berkeley, California
• D.E. Anderson, R.F. Welton
  ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

A novel concept for creating intense beams of negative hydrogen ion beams is presented. In this approach, an ECR ion source operating at 2.45 GHz frequency is utilized as a primary plasma generator and coupled to an SNS-type multi-cusp H^- ion source. The secondary source is driven by chopped dc power avoiding the use of filaments or of an internal rf antenna. The development of the new ion source is aimed at the future beam-power goal of 3 MW for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) that will be pursued after the start of SNS operations, but application to other proton driver accelerators that include an accumulator ring is feasible as well. The first two phases of this development effort have been successfully completed: assembly of a test stand and verification of the performance of an rf-driven SNS ion-source prototype; and extraction of electrons with more than 350 mA current from a 2.45-GHz ECR ion source obtained on loan from Argonne National Laboratory. The next goal is the demonstration of actual H^- ion production by this novel, hybrid ion source. This paper describes the source principle and design in detail and reports on the current status of the development work.

• J.W.  Staples, R. Keller, A. Sessler
  LBNL, Berkeley, California
• W. Chou
  Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois
• P.N. Ostroumov
  ANL, Argonne, Illinois

Accelerator-driven High-Energy Density Physics experiments require typically 1 nanosecond, 1 microcoulomb pulses of mass 20 ions accelerated to several MeV to produce eV-level excitations in thin targets, the "warm dense matter" regime. Traditionally the province of induction linacs, RF-based acceleration may be a viable alternative with recent breakthroughs in accelerating structures and high-field superconducting solenoids. A reference design for an RF-based accelerator for HEDP research is presented using 15 T solenoids and multiple-gap RF structures configured with either multiple parallel beams (combined at the target) or a single beam and a small stacking ring that accumulates 1 microcoulomb of charge. In either case, the beam is ballistically compressed with an induction linac core providing the necessary energy sweep and injected into a plasma-neutralized drift compression channel resulting in a 1 mm radius beam spot 1 nanosecond long at a thin foil or low-density target.