Design and study of an enhanced Faraday cup detector

Faraday cups (FCs) have been used to measure charged particle beams currents for a wide variety of experiments since the early days of particle accelerators. The major error source in FC performance is the escape of ejected electrons produced by energetic particles striking with interior metal surfaces of the FC. To avoid this problem, electrostatic and magnetic guard rings are used. Some kinds of non-symmetrical electrostatic FC with superior performance than traditional cylindrically symmetric FC have been reported. Here, we propose a novel non-symmetrical electrostatic FC structure, and a method to compare different non-symmetrical FCs. The purpose of this design is to recapture energetic electrons with lower guard ring bias. Performance simulations of the proposed FC show considerable improvement over other reported FCs. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.