  Laser-assisted stripping is a novel approach to H- charge exchange that
overcomes long-standing limitations associated with the traditional, foil-based
method of producing high-intensity, time-structured beams of protons. This
paper reports on the first successful demonstration of the laser stripping
technique for microsecond duration beams. The experiment represents a factor of
1000 increase in the stripped pulse duration compared with the previous
proof-of-principle demonstration. The central theme of the experiment is the
implementation of methods to reduce the required average laser power such that
high efficiency stripping can be accomplished for microsecond duration beams
using conventional laser technology. The experiment was performed on the
Spallation Neutron Source 1 GeV H- beam using a 1 MW peak power UV laser and
resulted in ~95% stripping efficiency.
