Gated beam imager for heavy ion beams

As part of the work building a small heavy-ion induction accelerator ring, or recirculator, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a diagnostic device measuring the four-dimensional transverse phase space of the beam in just a single pulse has been developed. This device, the Gated Beam Imager (GBI), consists of a thin plate filled with an array of 100-micron diameter holes and uses a Micro Channel Plate (MCP), a phosphor screen, and a CCD camera to image the beam particles that pass through the holes after they have drifted for a short distance. By time gating the MCP, the time evolution of the beam can also be measured, with each time step requiring a new pulse.