One approach being explored as a route to practical fusion
energy uses heavy ion beams focused on an indirect drive target.
Such beams will lose electrons while passing through background
gas in the target chamber, and therefore it is necessary to
assess the rate at which the charge state of the incident beam
evolves on the way to the target. Accelerators designed primarily
for nuclear physics or high energy physics experiments utilize
ion sources that generate highly stripped ions in order to achieve
high energies economically. As a result, accelerators capable
of producing heavy ion beams of 10 to 40 MeV/amu with charge
state 1 currently do not exist. Hence, the stripping cross sections
used to model the performance of heavy ion fusion driver beams
have, up to now, been based on theoretical calculations. We
have investigated experimentally the stripping of 3.4 MeV/amu
Kr+7 and Xe+11 in N2; 10.2
MeV/amu Ar+6 in He, N2, Ar, and Xe;
19 MeV/amu Ar+8 in He, N2, Ar, and
Xe; 30 MeV He+1 in He, N2, Ar, and Xe;
and 38 MeV/amu N+6 in He, N2, Ar,
and Xe. The results of these measurements are compared with
the theoretical calculations to assess their applicability over
a wide range of parameters.
Design of a magnetic optical system for transport and matching of multiple-charge-state heavy-ion beams
