Focusing an antimatter beam with matter

An experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center has recently focused positron beams by means of a plasma lens. This is the first time this process has been observed. The process started with a positron beam from the SLAC PEP-II positron source. This was sent through a damping ring and then accelerated to 28.5 GeV in the SLAC linac with a bunch intensity of 1-2*10/sup 10/. The beam was delivered to the Final Focus Test Beam Facility (FFTB) at a rate of 1 or 10 Hz. At the focal point of the FFTB transport, a special plasma chamber contains a 3 mm diameter pulsed gas nozzle through which either hydrogen or nitrogen gas is "puffed" into the ultrahigh vacuum system at plenum gas pressures up to 75 atm with a discharge time of 800 mu s. The gas is pumped off by a Roots-type pump. On either side of the central chamber are differential pumping sections semi- isolated from each other by thin titanium windows with small (2-5 mm diameter) apertures for the positron beams to pass through. These sections are evacuated by turbomolecular pumps and allow operation of the plasma lens with ultrahigh vacuum systems on either side. The plasma lens was generated by ionizing the gas using a pulsed YAG laser operating at 10 Hz in the infrared region (wavelength 1064 nm) and delivering a pulse energy of 1.5 J. The relativistic positron beam exhibits effects from both its charge and its current. (0 refs).