Proton beam simulation of duoplasmatron ion source for diagnostic neutral beam of Alborz tokamak

Plasma (ion) sources such as duoplasmatron are widely used in several important technological applications. In this paper, the extraction of the proton beam from the duoplasmatron ion source has been simulated with Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software through its particle tracking module as a part of the verification process determining the operational parameters of a new beamline. The obtained results indicated that minimum divergence was achieved when the DP perveance is equal to 0.47 of the perveance of planar diode, which is close to the theoretical value of the optimum divergence. The plasma boundary location in front of the ground electrode was considered as the simulation parameter. This parameter depends on the plasma density and magnetic field lines configuration. In the present study, simulated beam divergence has been compared with experimental data obtained from image processing of side-view of beam with Mathlab code. The applied parameters in all simulations are determined based on the required features of DP ion source in Amirkabir University of Technology (ADP) which is currently being constructed.