Advanced post-acceleration methodology for pseudospark-sourced electron beam

During its conductive phase, a pseudospark discharge is able to generate a low energy electron beam with a higher combined current density and brightness compared with electron beams formed from any other known type of electron source. In this paper, a configuration is proposed to post-accelerate an electron beam extracted from a single-gap pseudospark discharge cavity in order to achieve high quality high energy intense electron beams. The major advancement is that the triggering of the pseudospark discharge, the pseudospark discharge itself, and the post-accelerating of the electron beam are all driven by a single high voltage pulse. An electron beam with a beam current of ∼20 A, beam voltage of 40 kV, and duration of ∼180 ns has been generated using this structure. The beam energy can be adjusted through adjusting the amplitude of the voltage pulse and the operating voltage of the whole structure, which can be varied from 24 to 50 kV with an efficient triggering method under fixed gas pressure below ∼10 Pa.