Negative hydrogen ion source development for large helical device neutral beam injector (invited)

Large-scaled hydrogen negative ion source development is reviewed for a negative ion based neutral beam injector (NBI) in the large helical device (LHD) fusion machine. The target performance of the ion source is characterized by a high current of 30-40 A with a relatively low energy of 120-180 keV. A series of negative ion source development is conducted with a one-dimensionally reduced size of ion sources which still have a large beam area of 25 cmx26 cm or 50 cm with multi apertures. We employed a cesium-seeded volume production source with an external magnetic filter for the source development. Improvement of the arc plasma confinement is effective to produce a high-current negative ion of 16 A with a current density of 31 mA/cm(2) at a low operational gas pressure below 0.4 Pa. Suppression of the accelerated electrons is achieved both by strengthening the magnetic field at the extraction grid and by shaping the inside of the extraction grid aperture to shield the secondary electrons against the acceleration electric field. Multi beamlets delivered from a large area are finely focused with the aperture displacement technique applied to the grounded grid. Based on these results, the LHD-NBI negative ion source was designed and fabricated with a beam area of 25 cmx125 cm. The LHD-NBI source produced 25 A of negative ions with an energy of 104 keV at a low gas pressure of 0.3 Pa. A long-pulse negative ion beam of 81 keV-1.3 MW was produced for 10 s. Four sources were installed to the LHD-NBI system, and around 4 MW of neutral beams were injected into the LHD plasmas with an energy of 100-110 keV in the first period for the NBI experiments. The LHD-NBI ion source is still being developed to improve its performance, and the key issues for the improvement are discussed. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(00)61002-X].