Diagnostics of an H− ion beam by light emission from the drift chamber

The possibility of diagnosing an ion beam by light emission from the drift chamber is demonstrated using a 2-MeV H− ion beam as an example. For a local gas puffing and negligible beam losses, spatial characteristics of the beam and the time behavior of the current pulse were monitored and the falling of a small number of ions onto the vacuum-chamber wall was recorded. A profilometer for recording the emission from individual layers of the observed region is described.