Funneling experiments

High intensity rf-accelerator concepts for Heavy Ion Inertial Fusion (HIIF) injectors require small emittance, high current and high energy beams. The high brightness in such a driver linac is achieved by several funneling stages at low energies, in which two identically bunched ion beams are combined into a single beam with twice the frequency, current and brightness. For the first stage of a Heavy Ion Driver we propose the use of a two-beam accelerator structure which provides two beams within one cavity acid a single rf-deflector structure which bends the two beams to one common axis. The progress of the experiment and first beam-test results will be presented. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.