Effects of preneutralization on heavy ion fusion chamber transport

Abstract

Beams for heavy ion fusion are likely to require at least partial neutralization in the reactor chamber. Present target designs call for higher beam currents and smaller focal spots than most earlier designs, leading to high space-charge fields. Focusing is complicated by beam stripping in the low-pressure background gas expected in chambers. One method proposed for neutralization is passing an ion beam through a plasma before the beam enters the chamber. In this article, the electromagnetic particle-in-cell code LSP is used to study the effectiveness of this form of preneutralization for a range of plasma and beam parameters. For target chamber pressures below a few milliTorr of flibe gas, preneutralization is found to significantly reduce the beam emittance growth and spot size in the chamber.