High power beam injection using an improved negative ion source for the large helical device

In this article we describe the first results of beam injection using an improved negative ion source, which consists of a set of steering and multislot grounded grids. The set of the grids is designed to achieve high power beam injection for the large helical device (LHD). The main purpose in replacing the conventional multiaperture with multislot grids is to reduce the heat load onto the grid. By adopting the multislot grid, the frequency of voltage breakdown at the acceleration gap decreased considerably and the maximum beam energy attained was 180 keV, which is one of the target values of the LHD neutral beam injector (NBI). The maximum injection power reached 4.4 MW, consequently. The heat load onto the multislot grid was water calorimetrically measured and the load is suppressed by 50% compared to the multiaperture case. In the condition for maximum injection power, the beam profile obtained in the accelerator with the multislot grounded grid becomes vertically elongated due to the asymmetric electric field close to the grid slot. Although some part of this elongated beam is lost at the injection port, the multislot grid has enough performance for beam injection