MEGAPIXEL IMAGING CAMERA FOR EXPANDED H- BEAM MEASUREMENTS

A charge coupled device (CCD) imaging camera system has been developed as part of the Ground Test Accelerator project at the Los Alamos Nati onal Laboratory to measure the properties of a large diameter, neutral particle beam. The camera is designed to operate in the accelerator v acuum system. The CCD contains 1024 x 1024 pixels with pixel size of 1 9 x 19 mum2. It employs 4-phase parallel and 2-phase serial clocking, provided by an external word generator with serial pixel rate of 2.5 x 10(5) Hz. Reset switching noise and base line shift are reduced by an external signal processor. The video signal is digitized to 12 bits a nd data flow is controlled by a local processor in a VME-type crate. I mage analysis occurs in a workstation communicating with the crate via ethernet. Under cooled conditions the camera shows linearity to 2100 digitized counts and dark noise fluctuations of about +/- 1/2 count. F ull well capacity of the CCD is about 5 x 10(5) electron charges. A de scription of the camera design and performance is given.