Electron beam simulation from gun to collector: Towards a complete solution

An electron-beam simulation technique for high-resolution complete EBIS/T modelling is presented. The technique was benchmarked on the high compression HEC2 test-stand with an electron beam current, current density and energy of 10 A, 10 kA/cm2 and 49.2 keV, and on the immersed electron beam at REXEBIS for electron beamcharacteristics of 0.4 A, 200 A/cm2 and 4.5 keV. In both Brillouin-like and immersed beams the electron-beam radius varies from several millimeters at the gun, through some hundreds of micrometers in the ionization region to a few centimeters at the collector over a total length of several meters. We report on our approach for finding optimal meshing parameters, based on the local beam properties such as magnetic field-strength, electron energy and beam radius. This approach combined with dividing the problem domain into sub-domains, and subsequent splicing of the local solutions allowed us to simulate the beam propagation in EBISes from the gun to the collector using a conventional PC in about 24–36 h. Brillouin-like electron beams propagated through the complete EBIS were used to analyze the beam behavior within the collector region. We checked whether elastically reflected paraxial electrons from a Brillouin-like beam will escape from the collector region and add to the loss current. We have also studied the power deposition profiles as function of applied potentials using two electrode geometries for a Brillouin-like beam including the effects of backscattered electrons.