Production of highly charged ion beams with SECRAL

Abstract

Superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source with advanced design in Lanzhou (SECRAL) is an all-superconducting-magnet electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) for the production of intense highly charged ion beams to meet the requirements of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL). To further enhance the performance of SECRAL, an aluminum chamber has been installed inside a 1.5 mm thick Ta liner used for the reduction of x-ray irradiation at the high voltage insulator. With double-frequency (18+14.5 GHz) heating and at maximum total microwave power of 2.0 kW, SECRAL has successfully produced quite a few very highly charged Xe ion beams, such as 10 e microA of Xe(37+), 1 e microA of Xe(43+), and 0.16 e microA of Ne-like Xe(44+). To further explore the capability of the SECRAL in the production of highly charged heavy metal ion beams, a first test run on bismuth has been carried out recently. The main goal is to produce an intense Bi(31+) beam for HIRFL accelerator and to have a feel how well the SECRAL can do in the production of very highly charged Bi beams. During the test, though at microwave power less than 3 kW, more than 150 e microA of Bi(31+), 22 e microA of Bi(41+), and 1.5 e microA of Bi(50+) have been produced. All of these results have again demonstrated the great capability of the SECRAL source. This article will present the detailed results and brief discussions to the production of highly charged ion beams with SECRAL.

Intense highly charged ion beam production and operation with a superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source

“…SECRAL's performance, i.e. charge state, beam intensity and stability, has been continuously improved, especially more recently thanks to the use of new techniques [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

“…The commissioning of SECRAL took place in 2005 [27][28], and since 2007 this third generation ECRIS has been in routine operation for HIRFL [29][30]. Performance of the SECRAL source has been continuously improved in terms of beam intensity, charge states and beam stability, especially during the past years thanks to the use of new techniques or "tricks" [31][32][33][34][35]. Beam intensities of the highly charged heavy ions have been increased by a factor of 3-10, setting then many beam records produced by an ECRIS in cw mode.…”

X-ray emission of Xe30+ ion beam impacting on Au target

“…The research activities at HIRFL cover a wide-range including nuclear physics, astrophysics, atomic physics, plasma physics, hadron physics and the applications of heavy ion beams in material science, heavy ion cancer therapy, and so on (Xu, 2009(Xu, , 2010Zhao et al, 2009). In order to enhance HIRFL performance of beam intensity and energy, two electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion sources, LECR3 and SECRAL, were built during the past decade (Zhao et al, 2004;Sun et al, 2010). LECR3 is the third ECR ion source at Lanzhou, which was commissioned in 2003.…”

New development of advanced superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source SECRAL (invited)

“…In the past 20 years, beam intensities for highly charged heavy ions produced by ECR ion source have been increased by a factor of 10-100 for different ion beams, and a lot of ultrahigh charge state heavy ion beams not available before were produced, such as 1.0 e A of 40 Ar 18+ , 1 5 e A of 238 U 47+ , 1 and 1.5 e A of 209 Bi 50+ . 2 However, rapid progress of ECR ion source has not yet fulfilled the increasing demand of those large-scale accelerator facility under construction in recent years, such as 1.0 e mA of Ar 12+ for SPIRAL2 at GANIL, 3 0.52 e mA of U 35+ for RIBF at RIKEN, 4 270 e A of U 34+ for FRIB ͑Ref. 5͒ at MSU, and 100 e A of 238 U 41+ for HIRFL ͑Ref.…”