REG: High Sensitivity, High Speed Streak Camera System for Intense Pulsed Ion Beam Research

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This Engineering Research Equipment Grant provides funds for purchase of high speed, high sensitivity image converter streak camera system which will be used principally for intense ion beam research. The physics of high power pulsed accelerating gaps and intense ion beam propagation will be investigated using visible light emitted by accelerating or drifting ions, or light which results from the energetic ions interacting with matter (such as a scintillator). The streak camera system collects light intensity data as a function of position and time with subnanosecond temporal resolution and submillimeter spatial resolution, with sufficient sensitivity to allow several new diagnostic techniques to be tested, and previously used ones to be improved. An example in the former category is a technique to determine the electrostatic potential as a function of position in an ion-beam accelerating gap using Doppler shifted resonance absorption of tunable dye laser light by the accelerating ions. In the latter category is an experiment to measure the electric field vs position in the accelerating gap by coupling the streak camera to the output of a spectrometer and monitoring the Stark shifted line profile of specially selected ion emission lines. In that case, the intensity vs position vs time data from the streak camera will become intensity vs wavelength vs time. Similarly, ion transverse velocities vs position and time both in an accelerating gap and in a propagation region can be measured by monitoring the Doppler width of appropriate emission lines. An improved understanding of the physics of intense ion beam sources and of propagating ion beams will come from these measurements which will, in turn, improve the ability to customize beam sources for particular applications in science and engineering, such as materials surface modification and inertial confinement fusion.