The shape of a plasma meniscus is a key factor to determine the beam focusing. The physics model of the meniscus formation for hydrogen negative ion sources has not been established yet. A backward trajectory calculation based on experimental observation is performed in order to derive the particle information at the meniscus. It is observed that the negative ion density is spatially nonuniform in the direction parallel to the magnets for suppression of co-extracted electrons. A nonuniformity of the negative ion density in the vicinity of the meniscus is taken into account in the forward trajectory calculation. It reveals that the nonuniform negative ion distribution leads to degradation of the beam focusing and the beam splitting in phase space. The importance of the spatial distribution of negative ions on meniscus modelling is discussed with a comparison to uniform extraction model.
Benchmark of beam acceleration codes on a high voltage negative ion accelerator for fusion with a new hypothesis on the beam meniscus