Patent ID: 8530853

Claim:
A system for producing a charged particle beam from a photoionized cold atom beam, comprising: an atomic vapor source configured to generate a vapor of neutral atoms; a beam formation subsystem configured to receive atoms from the atomic vapor source and to produce an atom beam that includes said received atoms, the beam formation subsystem being further configured to control axial and transverse velocity distributions of the produced atom beam; a beam compression subsystem configured to receive the produced atom beam and to spatially compress said beam along each transverse axis in order to reduce the cross-sectional area of said produced beam and to reduce a velocity spread of said produced beam along directions transverse to the beam's direction of propagation; a photoionization subsystem configured to receive neutral atoms from the compressed atom beam and to direct at least one beam of laser light onto at least a portion of the neutral atoms in the compressed atom beam, thereby producing ions and electrons; an extraction subsystem configured to generate an electric field at the location of the produced ions and electrons, thereby producing an ion beam propagating in a first direction and an electron beam propagating in substantially the opposite direction; and a vacuum chamber evacuated to less than about 10 −6 millibar, said vacuum chamber configured to contain at least the produced atom beam, the compressed atom beam, the ion beam and the electron beam.