Design and mathematical modeling of scintillator-based electron–ion Thomson parabola spectrometer

Abstract

A compact scintillator-based electron–ion Thomson Parabola Spectrometer (ei-TPS) is designed and built up, which is able to measure the spectrum of electron and ion beams simultaneously in the same angular axis and real-time mode. The energy range of electrons is around 0.27–3.8 MeV with a relative energy resolution better than 2.5%, and the energy range of proton is around 0.16–21 MeV with a relative energy resolution better than 4% at the kinetic energy of 1 MeV, which makes it suitable for laser-driven ion acceleration experiments with 100-TW level laser. Detailed mathematical modeling is performed to reveal the dependence of properties, such as energy range and resolution, response, and detection threshold, on various parameters of ei-TPS, which is useful to modify the parameters according to specific requirements of electrons and ions.