Ion bunching in electronic space charge regions

A candidate for the initiation of a pellet fusion microexplosion is ions, but the power level from existing sources is far below the calculated value (1014 to 1015 watts for approximately i nsec). One can convert electron beam energy to ion motion with high efficiency (approximately 40%), but even the largest E-beam in existence is still below the required power level by two orders of magnitude. If the ions are bunched in their arrival at the target, the instantaneous power delivered to the target can be much larger than the terminal value. Theoretical calculations show that the power, time scale, and energy requirements for pellet fusion can be met with modifications of existing E-beam sources. This experimental work demonstrates that energy can be transferred from an electron beam to plasma ions and that resulting space charge neutralized ion pulse can be compressed in time. These experiments also demonstrate some unique transient interactions between the electron beam and the background plasma