For the purpose of material studies for future nuclear fusion reactors, the IFMIF deuteron beams present a simultaneous combination of unprecedentedly high intensity (2 × 125 mA CW), power (2 × 5 MW) and space charge. Special considerations and new concepts have been developed in order to overcome these challenges. The global strategy for beam dynamics design of the 40 MeV IFMIF accelerators is presented, stressing on the control of micro-losses, and the possibility of online fine tuning. Start-to-end simulations without and with errors are presented for the prototype accelerator. Considerations about conflicts between halo and emittance minimization are then discussed in this very high space charge context.

The High Current Experiment (HCX) is being assembled at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of the U.S. program to explore heavy ion beam transport at a scale representative of the low-energy end of an induction linac driver for fusion energy production. The primary mission of this experiment is to investigate aperture fill factors acceptable for the transport of space-charge dominated heavy ion beams at high space-charge intensity (line-charge density ∼ 0.2 μC/m) over long pulse durations (>4 μs). This machine will test transport issues at a driver-relevant scale resulting from nonlinear space-charge effects and collective modes, beam centroid alignment and beam steering, matching, image charges, halo, lost-particle induced electron effects, and longitudinal bunch control. We present the first experimental results carried out with the coasting K+ ion beam transported through the first 10 electrostatic transport quadrupoles and associated diagnostics. Later phases of the experiment will include more electrostatic lattice periods to allow more sensitive tests of emittance growth, and also magnetic quadrupoles to explore similar issues in magnetic channels with a full driver scale beam.