Beam Profile Effects on NPB Performance

Abstract

A comparison of neutral particle beam brightness for various neutral beam profiles indicates that the widely used assumption of a Gaussian profile may be misleading for collisional neutralizers. An analysis of available experimental evidence shows that lower peaks and higher tails, compared to a Gaussian beam profile, are observed out of collisional neutralizers, which implies that peak brightness is over estimated, and for a given NPB platform-to-target range, the beam current (power), dwell time or some combination of such engagement parameters would have to be altered to maintain a fixed dose on target. Based on the present analysis, this factor is nominally about 2.4 but may actually be as low as 1.8 or as high as 8. This is an important consideration in estimating NPB constellation performance in SDI engagement contexts.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA344742

Entities

People

  • R. J. Leclaire Jr

Organizations

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Collisions
  • Dwell Time
  • Gaussian Distributions
  • Governments
  • Ion Beams
  • Ions
  • Lethal Dosage
  • Lethality
  • Munitions
  • Neutral Particle Beams
  • New Mexico
  • Optical Lattices
  • Particle Beams
  • Scattering
  • United States
  • United States Government
  • Weapons

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Missile Defense Systems.
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy