Dynamics of electron flows and radiation fields produced by electron-beam diodes on the HERMES III accelerator

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Abstract
Several novel diodes to control the 19 MeV, 700 kA electron beam and subsequent bremsstrahlung from the HERMES III accelerator [Ramirez et al., Digest of Technical Papers of the 6th IEEE Pulse Power Conference (IEEE, New York, 1987), p. 294] have been designed and tested for the study of nuclear radiation effects. The electron beam has been propagated over 10 m in low‐pressure gas cells. A comprehensive set of diagnostics has been developed to characterize the performance of these diodes, beams, and radiation fields. The observed performance has been compared with models that combine the simulation of electron flow, using the magic particle‐in‐cell (PIC) code [ Pointon, J. Comput. Phys. (in press)] with simulation of electron‐photon transport in bremsstrahlung targets, using the cyltran Monte Carlo code [Halbleib and Mehlhorn, Nucl. Sci. Engl. 9 2, 338 (1986)]. Beam transport results have been compared with iprop PIC code [B. B. Godfrey and D. R. Welch, Twelfth Conference on Numerical Simulation of Plasmas (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, San Francisco, 1987), Paper No. CM1] simulations. The models are able to accurately predict the detailed spatial and temporal dependence of the electron flow and the resulting radiation field. This work provides fundamental insight into the behavior of high‐voltage, high‐current diodes. The present status of the research is reviewed.

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