Fast slit-beam extraction and chopping for neutron generator

High-intensity fast white neutron pulses are needed for pulsed fast neutron transmission spectroscopy (PFNTS). A compact tritium-tritium fusion reaction neutron generator with an integrated ion beam chopping system has been designed, simulated, and tested for PFNTS. The design consists of a toroidal plasma chamber with 20 extraction slits, concentric cylindrical electrodes, chopper plates, and a central titanium-coated beam target. The total ion beam current is 1 A. The beam chopping is done at 30 keV energy with a parallel-plate deflector integrated with an Einzel lens. Beam pulses with 5 ns width can be achieved with a 15 ns rise/fall time 1500 V sweep on the chopper plates. The neutrons are produced at 120 keV energy. A three-dimensional simulation code based on Vlasov iteration was developed for simulating the ion optics of this system. The results with this code were found to be consistent with other simulation codes. So far we have measured 50 ns ion beam pulses from the system. 0 2006 American Institute of Physics.