Two-dimensional visualization of cluster beams by microchannel plates

An advanced technique for a two-dimensional real time visualization of cluster beams in a vacuum as well as of the overlap volume of cluster beams with particle accelerator beams is presented. The detection system consists of an array of microchannel plates (MCPs) in combination with a phosphor screen which is read out by a CCD camera. This setup together with the ionization of a cluster beam by an electron or ion beam allows for spatial resolved investigations of the cluster beam position, size, and intensity. Moreover, since electrically uncharged clusters remain undetected, the operation in an internal beam experiment opens the way to monitor the overlap region and thus the position and size of an accelerator beam crossing an originally electrically neutral cluster jet. The observed intensity distribution of the recorded image is directly proportional to the convolution of the spatial ion beam and cluster beam intensities and is by this a direct measure of the two-dimensional luminosity distribution. This information can directly be used for the reconstruction of vertex positions as well as for an input for numerical simulations of the reaction zone. The spatial resolution of the images is dominated by the granularity of the complete MCP device and was found to be in the order of σ≈100μm.