Ion movie camera for particle-beam-fusion experiments

A camera with a 3 ns time resolution and a continuous (>100 ns) record length has been developed to image a 1012--1013 W/cm2 ion beam for inertial-confinement-fusion experiments. A thin gold Rutherford-scattering foil placed in the path of the beam scatters ions into the camera. The foil is in a near-optimized scattering geometry and reduces the beam intensity∼seven orders of magnitude. The scattered ions are pinhole imaged onto a 2D array of 39 p-i-n diode detectors; outputs are recorded on LeCroy 6880 transient-waveform digitizers. The waveforms are analyzed and combined to produce a 39-pixel movie which can be displayed on an image processor to provide time-resolved horizontal- and vertical-focusing information