[en] To produce four short x-ray pulses for radiography, the second-axis of the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility (DARHT-II) will use a fast kicker to select current pulses out of the 2-ms duration beam provided by the accelerator. Beam motion during the kicker voltage switching could lead to dilution of the time integrated beam spot and make the spot elliptical. A large elliptical x-ray source produced by those beams would degrade the resolution and make radiographic analysis difficult. We have developed a tuning strategy to eliminate the spot size dilution, and tested the strategy successfully on ETA-II with the DARHT-II kicker hardware

[en] To successfully tune the DARHT II transport beamline requires the close coupling of a model of the beam transport and the measurement of the beam observables as the beam conditions and magnet settings are varied. For the ETA II experiment using the DARHT II beamline components this was achieved using the SUICIDE (Simple User Interface Connecting to an Integrated Data Environment) data analysis environment and the FITS (Fully Integrated Transport Simulation) model. The SUICIDE environment has direct access to the experimental beam transport data at acquisition and the FITS predictions of the transport for immediate comparison. The FITS model is coupled into the control system where it can read magnet current settings for real time modeling. We find this integrated coupling is essential for model verification and the successful development of a tuning aid for the efficient convergence on a useable tune. We show the real time comparisons of simulation and experiment and explore the successes and limitations of this close coupled approach

[en] The DARHT II accelerator at LANL is preparing a series of preliminary tests at the reduced voltage of 7.8 MeV. The transport hardware between the end of the accelerator and the final target magnet was shipped to LLNL and installed on ETA II. Using the ETA II beam at 5.2 MeV we completed a set of experiments designed reduce start up time on the DARHT II experiments and run the equipment in a configuration adapted to the reduced energy. Results of the beam transport using a reduced energy beam, including the kicker and kicker pulser system will be presented

[en] This paper presents the physics design of the DARHT-II downstream system, which consists of a diagnostic beam stop, a fast, high-precision kicker system and the x-ray converter target assembly. The beamline configuration, the transverse resistive wall instability and the ion hose instability modeling are presented. They also discuss elimination of spot size dilution during kicker switching and implementation of the foil-barrier scheme to minimize the backstreaming ion focusing effects. Finally, they present the target converter's configuration, and the simulated DARHT-II x-ray spot sizes and doses. Some experimental results, which support the physics design, are also presented