A high-current plasma emitter of electrons based on a glow discharge with a multirod electrostatic trap

Abstract

Pulsed electron guns that produce 170-mm-diameter beams with currents of up to 700 A, electron energies of 300 keV, and a pulse width of ∼200 μs at a gas pressure of ∼0.01 Pa are experimentally studied. Glow-discharge plasma with electron confinement in an electrostatic trap is used as the electron emitter. The trap is formed by a hexagonal prism that consists of 204 cathode rods, which are 5 mm in diameter, 200 mm in length and are spaced by 1.5 mm, as well as 780 cathode rods, which are 5 mm in diameter and 98 mm in length, the spacing between their axes amounting to 15 mm. The latter rods are inside the former system of rods. The plasma emitter fills the hexagonal prism, which is free of rods, at the trap center with a distance of 280 mm between opposite sides and a height of ∼200 mm between the emissive grid connected to the anode and the trap bottom covered with 23-mm-diameter cathode disks. All the cathode rods and disks are insulated from one another and connected to the discharge power supply through TVO-2 430-Ω resistors. The current limitation in the circuit of each cathode element by a value of ∼2 A at a pulse width of ∼5 ms of the glow-discharge current of up to 1 kA fully excludes its glow-to-arc transitions and allows production of continuous pulsed electron beams with an energy capacity of up to 40 kJ and a uniform distribution of the current density over its cross-sectional area of ∼0.025 m2.