A High Efficiency Bunching System for the TUNL Polarized Ion Source

Abstract

The problem of producing pulsed beams without large beam current losses has been the topic of recent interest particularly in areas where large peak currents are required. In addition, an efficient bunching system will allow the use of pulsed beams when source intensities are limited. The motivation for the development of the authors' high efficiency bunching system arose from their strong interest in neutron physics and the desire to extend their research with experiments requiring polarized neutrons. A common method for the production of polarized neutrons is to bombard a deuterium gas cell with a polarized deuteron beam. The D(..-->..d,n)/sup 3/He reaction has a large cross section and the outgoing neutron has a polarization of approximately 60 % in the energy range between 6 MeV to 16 Mev. Most experiments which involve the detection of neutrons use time-of-flight techniques to determine the neutron energy. An excellent way of providing time-of-flight information is to use pulsed beams. To be useful for time of flight experiments beam pulses must be on the order of a few nanoseconds wide. In addition there must be sufficient time between beam bursts to allow the reaction neutrons to travel from the target to the detector beforemore » the next beam burst arrives at the target. For reactions studied at the authors' laboratory, with their flight paths, this time is on the order of 400 ns.« less