Macroparticle filtering of high-current vacuum arc plasmas

The transport of vacuum are plasmas through a 90 degrees curved magnetic macroparticle filter was investigated using a high-current pulsed are source with a carbon cathode, The peak are current was in the kiloampiere range, exceeding considerably the level of what has been reported in the literature, The main question investigated was whether magnetic macroparticle filters could be scaled up while maintaining the transport efficiency of small filters, In front of the cathode, we found that are current dependent total ion saturation currents were-in the range from 10% to 23% of the are current, The best relative transmission was 25% (time integrated output/time integrated input) at a duct wall bias of 12.5 V and at an axial magnetic field of about 100 mT, The measured relative transmission of the used high-current arrangement is comparable to what has been observed with other low-current filters, Tbe absolute measurable ion saturation currents at the filter exit reached 70 A at an are current of about 1000 A.