RIKEN Nishina Center, Wako
Significant progress has been achieved since first ECR ion source was developed more than three decades ago and it became one of the best ion sources for heavy ion accelerators in the world. Such progress has been mainly due to utilization of higher microwave frequency and stronger magnetic confinement, technical innovations, and understanding of the production mechanisms of highly charged heavy ions in ECR plasma. Especially, in the last decade, the progress is strongly dependent on advances in the superconducting magnet technology and understanding of the Physics of ECR plasma. Very recently, as the interest in the radioactive beam for research in various fields grows, the need for more intense beam of highly charged heavy ions to inject into the accelerator requires new innovation to improve the ECR ion source performance. In this contribution, I will present the progress of the technology and physics of ECR ion sources. Based on these results, the concepts for next generation ECR ion source for meet the requirements will be presented.
Far-Tech, Inc., San Diego, California
ANL, Argonne
Funding: This work is supported by the US DOE SBIR program
GEM, developed by FAR-TECH Inc, is a self consistent hybrid code to simulate general ECRIS plasma. It calculates EDF (electron distribution function) using a bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck code and calculates the ion flow using a fluid code, which has been modified to implement new boundary settings including fixed boundary ion velocities or fixed sheath potentials at both ends of the device. Extensive studies on the convergence and performance of the code have been performed. Also, GEM has been connected to MCBC (Monte Carlo beam capture) code and the validations of the code using ANL ECR-I charge breeding data and other published experiments are underway. The typical converged solutions of GEM and the comparisons with the experiments will be presented and discussed.