A feasibility study of H sup - beam extraction technique using YAG laser

Under a framework of JAERI-KEK joint project of high intensity proton accelerator, as for research and develop of the accelerator driven nuclear transmutation of the long lived radioactive nuclide, it is planed to built the Transmutation Physics Experiment Facility (TEF-P) and the Transmutation Engineering Experiment Facility (TEF-E). The TEF-P is used for the experiments for subcritical system coupled with a spallation neutron target bombarded with 600-MeV proton beam accelerated by the LINAC. To limit the maximum thermal power less than 500 W at the TEF-P, an incident beam power should be less than 10 W. On the contrary, at the TEF-E, high power beam of 200 kW is requested. Both high and low power beams are demanded for the transmutation facilities. It is difficult to deliver a low power beam to the TEF-P. Conventional beam extraction technique with a thin foil, is not desirable because the scattering of the beam at the foil requires the massive shield. Therefore, we study a new technique to extract a small portion of the beam precisely from the high intensity beam by using a laser beam. By a laser beam, H sup - in the beam from LINAC is partially changed to H sup 0 beam so that a low current H sup 0 beam can be obtained. As the cross section of the charge exchange reaction for H sup - ions has a peak around at a wave length of 1 mu m for photons, YAG laser is suitable for this charge exchange because of its 1.06 mu m wave length. It is derived that 10 W beam for 600-MeV proton can be extracted by the YAG laser with power of 2 J for each pulse of 25 Hz. By this technique, the pulse width for the extracted beam can be controlled by changing the time width of laser irradiation. When a charge exchanger having the beam collide point existing in straight section, a background beam current of projectile, however, will be increased due to the interaction with the residual gas in the beam duct. Thus, a charge exchanger is devised having the beam collide point in a by changing this charge exchanger, it is demonstrated that the possibility of the charge exchange due to interactions with residual gas can be drastically decrease. By the above studies, it is recognized that feasibility of the technique of beam extraction with the laser.