Tomographic diagnostic of the hydrogen beam from a negative ion source

In this paper the tomographic diagnostic developed to characterize the 2D density distribution of a particle beam from a negative ion source is described. In particular, the reliability of this diagnostic has been tested by considering the geometry of the source for the production of ions of deuterium extracted from an rf plasma (SPIDER). SPIDER is a low energy prototype negative ion source for the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) neutral beam injector, aimed at demonstrating the capability to create and extract a current of D - (H -) ions up to 50 A (60 A) accelerated at 100kV. The ions are extracted over a wide surface (1.52×0.56m2) with a uniform plasma density which is prescribed to remain within 10% of the mean value. The main target of the tomographic diagnostic is the measurement of the beam uniformity with sufficient spatial resolution and of its evolution throughout the pulse duration. To reach this target, a tomographic algorithm based on the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique is developed and the geometry of the lines of sight is optimized so as to cover the whole area of the beam. Phantoms that reproduce different experimental beam configurations are simulated and reconstructed, and the role of the noise in the signals is studied. The simulated phantoms are correctly reconstructed and their two-dimensional spatial nonuniformity is correctly estimated, up to a noise level of 10% with respect to the signal.