Neutralized drift compression offers an effective means for particle beam pulse compression and current amplification. In neutralized drift compression, a linear longitudinal velocity tilt (head-to-tail gradient) is applied to the non-relativistic beam pulse, so that the beam pulse compresses as it drifts in the focusing section. The beam current can increase by more than a factor of 100 in the longitudinal direction. We have performed an analytical study of how errors in the velocity tilt acquired by the beam in the induction bunching module limit the maximum longitudinal compression. It is found that the compression ratio is determined by the relative errors in the velocity tilt. That is, one-percent errors may limit the compression to a factor of one hundred. However, a part of the beam pulse where the errors are small may compress to much higher values, which are determined by the initial thermal spread of the beam pulse. It is also shown that sharp jumps in the compressed current density profile can be produced due to overlaying of different parts of the pulse near the focal plane. Examples of slowly varying and rapidly varying errors compared to the beam pulse duration are studied. For beam velocity errors given by a cubic function, the compression ratio can be described analytically. In this limit, a significant portion of the beam pulse is located in the broad wings of the pulse and is poorly compressed. The central part of the compressed pulse is determined by the thermal spread. The scaling law for maximum compression ratio is derived. In addition to a smooth variation in the velocity tilt, fast-changing errors during the pulse may appear in the induction bunching module if the voltage pulse is formed by several pulsed elements. Different parts of the pulse compress nearly simultaneously at the target and the compressed profile may have many peaks. The maximum compression is a function of both thermal spread and the velocity errors. The effects of the finite gap width of the bunching module on compression are analyzed analytically.

The Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-II (NDCX-II) is an induction linac that generates intense pulses of 1.2 MeV helium ions for heating matter to extreme conditions. Here, we present recent results on optimizing beam transport. The NDCX-II beamline includes a 1-m-long drift section downstream of the last transport solenoid, which is filled with charge-neutralizing plasma that enables rapid longitudinal compression of an intense ion beam against space-charge forces. The transport section on NDCX-II consists of 28 solenoids. Finding optimal field settings for a group of solenoids requires knowledge of the envelope parameters of the beam. Imaging the beam on the scintillator gives the radius of the beam, but the envelope angle is not measured directly. We demonstrate how the parameters of the beam envelope (radius, envelop angle, and emittance) can be reconstructed from a series of images taken by varying the B-field strengths of a solenoid upstream of the scintillator. We use this technique to evaluate emittance at several points in the NDCX-II beamline and for optimizing the trajectory of the beam at the entry of the plasma-filled drift section.

We have commenced experiments with intense short pulses of ion beams on the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-II at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, by generating beam spots size with radius r<1 mm within 2 ns FWHM and approximately 10¹⁰ ions/pulse. To enable the short pulse durations and mm-scale focal spot radii, the 1.2 MeV Li⁺ ion beam is neutralized in a 1.6-meter drift compression section located after the last accelerator magnet. An 8-Tesla short focal length solenoid compresses the beam in the presence of the large volume plasma near the end of this section before the target. The scientific topics to be explored are warm dense matter, the dynamics of radiation damage in materials, and intense beam and beam-plasma physics including selected topics of relevance to the development of heavy-ion drivers for inertial fusion energy. Here we describe the accelerator commissioning and time-resolved ionoluminescence measurements of yttrium aluminum perovskite using the fully integrated accelerator and neutralized drift compression components.