CONTROL AND TRANSPORT OF INTENSE ELECTRON BEAMS

Abstract

The transport of intense beams for advanced accelerator applications with high-intensity beams such as heavy-ion inertial fusion, spallation neutron sources, and intense light sources requires tight control of beam characteristics over long distances. The University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER), which uses low energy, high current electron beams to model the transport physics of intense space-charge-dominated beams, employs real-time beam characterization and control in order to optimize beam quality throughout the strong focusing lattice. We describe in this dissertation the main beam control techniques used in UMER, which include optimal beam steering by quadrupole scans, beam rotation correction using a skew corrector, rms envelope matching and optimization, empirical envelope matching, beam injection, and phase space reconstruction using a tomographic method. Using these control techniques, we achieved the design goals for UMER. The procedure is not only indispensable for optimum beam transport over long distances, but also provides important insights into the beam physics involved.