Suppression of current fluctuations in an intense electron beam

When an intense beam encounters an aperture, the transmitted current depends on the properties of the beam and the transport channel, as well as those of the aperture itself. In some cases, an increase in the incident beam current will be exactly compensated by an increase in the incident beam area, so that the current density at the aperture remains unchanged. When this occurs, the transmitted beam current becomes independent of changes in the incident beam current, providing a passive means for suppressing current fluctuations in the beam. In this article, a key requirement for the existence of this condition is derived. This requirement is shown to be fulfilled in the case of an idealized uniform focusing channel in the small-signal limit, but to be violated when the current fluctuations are not small. Even in this case, the apertured transport system retains the ability to suppress-but not totally eliminate-fluctuations in the transmitted beam current for a wide range of incident beam currents. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3468176]