Design considerations for a negative ion source for dc operation of high-power, multi-megaelectron-volt neutral beams

A dc negative hydrogen and/or deuterium ion source is needed to prouce high-power, high-energy neutral beams for alpha diagnostics and current drive applicatiosn in fusion devices. The favorable beam particle energy for such applications extends to 1.5 MeV/amu. Continuous-wave (cw) radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerators have been proposed to accelerate negative ions effeciently to this energy range. In this paper, the desired beam properties for ion beams injected into cw RFQ accelerators are summariezed. A number of candidate ion sources being developed at Culham, JAERI, LBL, and ORNL may prove useful for these applications. The properties of the Volume Ionization with Transverse Extraction (VITEX) ion sources being developed at ORNL are presented. Scaling such a dc ion source to produce ampere beams is discussed. 53 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs