The Neutral Particle Beam Space Experiment (NPBSE) accelerator designs

Accelerators that are designed to operate in a space environment are more strongly constrained by hardware envelope size, power consumption and cooling requirements than are equivalent ground based systems. The challenges presented by these constraints have resulted in the development of novel features in the Neutral Particle Beam Space Experiment (NPBSE) accelerator designs, which may also find application in ground systems. We will describe both the low power 2.0 MeV RFQ and 5.11 MeV ramped gradient DTL designs. The initial DTL cell is suitably phased as a compactor to provide longitudinal matching and the first four DTL PMQs have different strengths to obtain transverse matching. Minimum beam momentum spread is essential to the minimization of chromatic aberrations in the downstream optics components but drift space for beam expansion prior to compaction is highly limited. We therefore shift to positive synchronous phase in the tail of the DTL to minimize the required pre-compaction drift length. These and other accelerator design details will be described.<
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