A novel longitudinal laserwire to non-invasively measure 6-dimensional bunch parameters at high current hydrogen ion accelerators

Optical methods for non-invasive beam diagnostics of high current H− ion accelerators have been developed in recent years. Such laserwires typically measure a 1D beam profile and/or 2D transverse emittance from the products of photo-detached ions as a laser beam is scanned across the H− beam. For laser pulse durations (~80 ns) longer than the RF period (~3ns), the detector integrates many complete bunches, enabling only transverse beam monitoring. This paper presents a new technique to capture a series of time resolved transverse emittance measurements along the bunch train. A fast (~10 ps) pulsed laser photo-detaches ions within each bunch and is synchronised to sample consecutive bunches at certain longitudinal positions along each bunch. A fast detector records the spatial distribution and time-of-flight of the neutralised H0, thus both the transverse and longitudinal emittance are reconstructed. We present simulations of a time varying pulsed laser field interacting within an H− bunch, and estimate the yield, spatial and time distributions of H0 arriving at the detector. We summarise the design of a recently funded longitudinal laserwire being installed in FETS at RAL, UK.