Open Access

Ansgar Jakob, Horst Klein, Andreas Lakatos, Jürgen Pozimski, L. Wicke

• For investigation of space charge compensation process due to residual gas ionization and the experimentally study of the rise of compensation, a Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) system consisting of an ion source, two solenoids, a decompensation electrode to generate a pulsed decompensated ion beam and a diagnostic section was set up. The potentials at the beam axis and the beam edge were ascertained from time resolved measurements by a residual gas ion energy analyzer. A numerical simulation of self-consistent equilibrium states of the beam plasma has been developed to determine plasma parameters which are difficult to measure directly. The temporal development of the kinetic and potential energy of the compensation electrons has been analyzed by using the numerically gained results of the simulation. To investigate the compensation process the distribution and the losses of the compensation electrons were studied as a function of time. The acquired data show that the theoretical estimated rise time of space charge compensation neglecting electron losses is shorter than the build up time determined experimentally. To describe the process of space charge compensation an interpretation of the achieved results is given.