Design of improved electric potential fluctuation detector for 2 MeV heavy ion beam probe on TEXT (abstract)

• Published in: Review of scientific instruments 1995-01, Vol.66 (1), p.837-837
• Main Authors: Russell, W. G., Schoch, P. M., Crowley, T. P., Schatz, J. G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0034-6748; 1089-7623
• DOI: 10.1063/1.1146240

The present detector system used for the TEXT heavy ion beam probe (HIBP) is not sensitive to potential fluctuations of magnitude below 10−5×V acc where V acc is the accelerator voltage. With the upgrade of the TEXT HIBP to 2 MeV, the minimum detectable fluctuation is on the order of 10 V under optimum conditions. A new detector system has been proposed, and a proof‐of‐concept experiment has indicated that it should be sensitive to fluctuations on the order of 1 V. The new system separates the ion beam entering the energy analyzer into ten smaller beams. The fluctuations in each smaller beam are measured individually, effectively increasing the signal by a factor of 10 without increasing detector noise. A version of the new detector system is presented that is designed specifically for the high‐energy analyzer of the 2 MeV TEXT HIBP. In addition to the improved detector set, this design includes a standard detector set for side‐by‐side comparison, as well as for measuring other plasma parameters.