Study of a test facility scenario

Summary

We have studied concepts for an HIF test facility to be used for indirect-drive fusion target experiments. The overall framework is a 300 Tm synchrotron with injection of singly charged heavy ions from a linac of order 700 MV. Several beam lines are necessary,e.g. after separating the extracted pulses in an external beam switchyard. With target experiments, in a single converter of radius 500 μm and density of order 1 g/cm³ an energy of 200 kJ is deposited in an effective pulse time of 4 ns. A consersion efficiency of roughly 0.5 is expected. An emittance of 10 mm mrad is assumed for the final beams. Without non-Liouvillian stacking or neutralization in the beam lines we find 32 beam lines are necessary. A major limitation is the bunching voltage required. Using a non-Liouvillian fast pulse stacking ring does not by itself allow an appreciable reduction in this number. However, including space charge neutralization in the beam lines would be a big advantage. With both non-Liouvillian fast stacking and neutralization, we find much fewer beam lines (4) are required. Based on these results we urge further study of beam transport in a tenuous static hydrogen plasma which could be incorporated into HIF beam lines.