Diagnosis of high-brightness ion beams produced in point pinch diodes

Diagnosis and evaluation have been carried out of the ion beam and anode plasma produced in a ‘‘point pinch diode.’’ From the measurement of a highly resolved Thomson-parabola mass spectrometer, the ions accelerated in the diode gap contain (a) protons, (b) highly ionized carbon and oxygen ions, and (c) singly ionized medium mass ions such as carbon, oxygen, CO+2, OH+, H2O+. Time-integrated x-ray and particle pinhole images show the spot size of the electron beam on the plasma to be less than 0.5 mm in diameter, in which fine structures are found with size less than 0.1 mm. A Kα satellite line of Al V is observed with a crystal spectrograph, which indicates the existence of Al4+ in the plasma.