A Noninteractive Beam Position and Size Monitor for Heavy Ions

The Ion Beam Fusion development program at Argonne National Laboratory requires noninteractive size measurements of a pulsed, 30 mA, Xe+l particle beam. Pulses of 100 μs duration will be produced by the 1.5 MV preaccelerator; therefore, fast response diagnostics are required. Techniques of utilizing residual gas ionization to profile particle beams have been reported before. This paper discusses the development of vertical and horizontal beam profile monitors that are synchronously clocked to interface with oscilloscopes and computers. Modern integrated circuitry is utilized which boosts performance to a point where pulses as short as 20 μs can be analyzed. A small, simple ionization chamber is shown which provides sixteen channels of position resolution over 12 cm of aperture.