Design Optimization of Permanent-Magnet Based Compact Transport Systems for Laser-Driven Proton Beams

Laser-driven (LD) ion acceleration will be explored in a newly constructed short-focal length beamline at the BELLA petawatt facility (iP2). For applications utilizing such LD ion beams, a beam transport system is required, which for reasons of compactness be ideally contained within 3 m. The large divergence and energy spread of LD ion beams present a unique challenge to transporting them compared to beams from conventional accelerators. This presentation gives an overview of various compact transport designs for the iP2 proton beamline that respond to various needs from applications and have different advantages and disadvantages. Here we considered the use of permanent magnet elements, which can provide high magnetic field gradients on a small footprint. The performance of each design was evaluated based on high order particle tracking simulations of typical LD proton beams.