Towards operational reality with laser assisted charge exchange

Laser-Assisted Charge Exchange (LACE) is being developed at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) as a potential replacement for injection foils, which are not expected to endure in the 10 MW beam power regime. Previous experimental demonstrations have achieved highly efficient charge exchange of H⁻ ions to protons for beam durations of up to microseconds. A refined method, capable of scaling to full millisecond duty cycles, has been experimentally validated and aligns with theoretical models. The current phase of development focuses on optimizing laser and beam parameters for LACE using a newly installed, flexible experimental setup in the High-Energy Beam Transport (HEBT) line at SNS. This setup takes advantage of the upgraded SNS beam energy of 1.3 GeV, offering greater flexibility in selecting laser wavelengths for the experiments. Simultaneously, efforts are underway to design a LACE ring injection system that fits within the spatial constraints of the existing SNS ring injection region. This presentation will provide an update on the progress of these developments.