High power high brightness electron beam generation in a pulse-line driven pseudospark discharge

High brightness (/spl sim/3/spl times/10/sup 10/ A/m/sup 2/rad/sup 2/), high power density (/spl sim/10/sup 10/ W/cm/sup 2/) electron beams have been generated by the mating of a hollow-cathode discharge device operating in the pseudospark regime to the output of a high power pulse line accelerator. Very small diameter (/spl sim/1 mm) electron beams with currents in the range 500-1000 A and energies in the range 150-300 keV have been generated with measured effective emittances of about 85 mm-mrad. Such emittances are comparable to those achieved in conventional electron beam sources at current densities several orders of magnitude lower than those observed in these experiments. >