The linear IFMIF prototype accelerator (LIPAc) will be commissioned in Rokkasho, Japan, shortly. Due to its high beam power of over 1 MW and its tremendous continuous wave beam current of 125 mA, non-interceptive profilers are required. We present the development of the LIPAc ionization profile monitor.
Due to the very high beam current, LIPAc is designed in a very compact manner which hardly leaves any room for diagnostics. An IPM prototype and the final IPM versions have been designed using FEM simulations to achieve the optimal electric field keeping the tight space requirements of LIPAc. Due to the limited space available, we had to abstain from using a magnetic guidance field and collect ions instead of electrons. To cope with the strong space charge forces of the beam, we have developed a software algorithm that aims to not only to scale the distorted measured profile to its original size, but to fully reconstruct the original beam profile. The profiler and the algorithm have been tested in detail at CEA Saclay. Results of simulations as well as tests performed will be presented.