Evaluation of dark current profile for prediction of voltage holding capability on multi-aperture multi-grid accelerator for ITER

Nishikiori, Ryo; Kojima, Atsushi; Hanada, Masaya; Kashiwagi, Mieko; Watanabe, Kazuhiro; Umeda, Naotaka; Tobari, Hiroyuki; Yoshida, Masafumi; Ichikawa, Masahiro; Hiratsuka, Junichi; Yamano, Yasushi*; Okura, Tetsuya*; NB Heating Technology Group

One of critical issues for high-energy high-current beam acceleration in ITER and JT-60SA is the high voltage holding which is dominated by vacuum discharges. The past results suggest that vacuum discharge occurs beyond the threshold of the dark current. The dark current can be derived from F-N theory where electric field enhancement factor beta is included. Though, beta could only be evaluated from the experiment previously. Therefore, the method to decide beta without experiment is required. This time dark currents were measured at three different areas to compare beta in different electric field. As a result, the effective electric field E, where E is average electric field, were found to be almost constant for different areas although the beta is largely different. By applying E, beta can be evaluated analytically, leading to the analytical prediction of the dark current and voltage holding capability without the measurements.