STUDY OF SOURCE OF LOW-ENERGY POLARIZED PROTONS

The authors describe a pulsed source of polarized protons that is being developed at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the experimental apparatus, and a procedure for measurement of the polarization of a proton beam with an energy of approximately 10 keV. The total systematic measurements error is [GRAPHICS] a statistical error of 5.10(-3) is reached in a measurement time of approximately 200 sec. The beam polarization reaches 0.91 +/- 0.01. It is shown that the main factor reducing beam polarization is dilution of the polarized beam by unpolarized protons extracted from the plasma ionizer of the source.