Session GP1 - Poster Session IV.
POSTER session, Tuesday afternoon, October 30
Exhibit Hall B,
A first set of experiments has been completed on the Cornell ion ring experiment FIREX, with a novel ion diode. The diode is coaxial with the anode at 5~cm radius and the cathode at 6~cm radius from the axis of a solenoidal magnetic field. The diode accelerates an intense proton beam radially outward. The object is to use the solenoidal field to confine this beam to form a strong ring. The field (6~kG) also provides magnetic insulation of the diode accelerating gap. The anode is composed of axially streaming hydrogen plasma, produced by an inductive, gas-breakdown source inside the anode (high-voltage) feed of the 700~kV FIREX pulser. The cathode is a drifting electron population emitted from the end of the cathode of the bi-conic MITL feed. First results showed that this diode and feed operate with good efficiency and produces 50-100~A/cm^2 proton current over its \sim40~cm axial length (\sim1500~cm^2 area), with excellent uniformity. This represents a possible factor of two increase in the proton population available for ring formation on FIREX.