The aim of the presented experiments is to study the transport
of a heavy ion beam in a high-current plasma channel. The discharge
is initiated in NH3 gas at pressures between 2 and
20 mbar by a line-tuned CO2 laser. A stable discharge
over the entire electrode gap (0.5 m) was achieved for currents
up to 60 kA. Concerning the ion beam transport, the magnetic
field distribution inside the plasma channel has to be known.
The ion-optical properties of the plasma channel have been
investigated using different species of heavy ions (C, Ni, Au,
U) with 11.4 MeV/u during six runs at the Gesellschaft für
Schwerionenforschungs-UNILAC linear accelerator. The high magnetic
field allowed the accomplishment of one complete betatron
oscillation along the discharge channel. The results obtained
up to now are very promising and suggest that, by scaling the
discharge gap to longer distances, the beam transport over several
meters is possible with negligible losses.
Stability properties of the transverse envelope equations describing intense ion beam transport
