First commissioning experiments at DARHT-II

The second axis of the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydro-Test (DARHT) facility will provide up to four short (< 150 ns) radiation pulses for flash radiography of high-explosive driven implosion experiments. To accomplish this the DARBT-II linear induction accelerator (LIA) will produce a 2-kA electron beam with 18-MeV kinetic energy, constant to within ±0.5% for 2-μs. A fast kicker will cleave four short pulses out of the 2-μs flattop, with the bulk of the beam diverted into a dump. The short pulses will then be transported to the final-focus magnet, and focused onto a tantalum target for conversion to bremsstrahlung pulses for radiography. DARHT-II is a collaborative effort between the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories of the University of California. The first tests of the second axis accelerator were designed to demonstrate the technology, and to meet the modest performance requirements for closing out. The DARHT-II construction project. These experiments demonstrated that we could indeed produce a 1.2 kA beam with pulse length 0.5-1.2 μs and accelerate it to 12.5 MeV. These de-rated parameters were chosen to minimize risk of damage in these first experiments with this novel accelerator. The beam showed no evidence of the BBU instability for these parameters. In fact, we had to reduce the magnetic guide field by a factor of 5 before BBU was observed.