0000000000010234
AUTHOR
M. Sakildien
Plasma diagnostic tools for ECR ion sources : What can we learn from these experiments for the next generation sources
International audience; The order-of-magnitude performance leaps of ECR ion sources over the past decades result from improvements to the magnetic plasma confinement, increases in the microwave heating frequency, and techniques to stabilize the plasma at high densities. Parallel to the technical development of the ion sources themselves, significant effort has been directed into the development of their plasma diagnostic tools. We review the recent results of Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) plasma diagnostics highlighting a number of selected examples of plasma density, electron energy distribution, and ion confinement time measurements, obtained mostly with the second-gener…
Inner shell ionization of argon in ECRIS plasma
Abstract The volumetric K α emission rate of argon emitted from the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) heated plasmas of the JYFL (University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Physics) 14 GHz ECR ion source (ECRIS) and the 14.5 GHz Grenoble Test Source (GTS) at iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences have been measured to gain an understanding of the influence of the ion source tune parameters on the absolute inner shell ionization rate. It was observed that the behaviour of the ionization rate and the extracted ion beam currents react differently, depending the parametric sweep performed. The neutral gas pressure and incident microwave power was found to have the strongest influence on…
Experimental evidence on microwave induced electron losses from ECRIS plasma
The balance between warm and hot (>1 keV) electron density and their losses from the magnetic confinement system of an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) plasma is considered to be one of the main factors determining the rate of the high charge state ion production. One of the key loss channels for heated electrons is thought to be induced by the injected microwaves. While this loss mechanism, referred to as rf-induced pitch angle scattering, has been studied theoretically and with computational tools, direct experimental evidence of its significance in minimum-B ECRIS plasmas remains limited. In this work, experimental evidence of microwave induced electron losses in the axial…
Studying the double-frequency heating mode in ECRIS plasma using Kα diagnostics
Despite the success of double-heating frequency in enhancing high charge state production, the underlying physics remains poorly understood. By combining three different diagnostic techniques i.e. Kα emission, optical emission and the extracted charge state distribution, it is now possible to assess the proposed explanations for the effectiveness of double-frequency heating against the experimental results. These results seem to indicate that the increase of plasma density accounts largely for the favorable behavior of this operation mode compared to single-frequency mode. peerReviewed
The effect of microwave power on the Ar9+ and Ar13+ optical emission intensities and ion beam currents in ECRIS
The production of Ar9+ and Ar13+ ions in an ECRIS plasma and the efficiency of the ion beam extraction and transport of the resulting Ar9+ and Ar13+ ion beams have been studied with the JYFL 14 GHz ECRIS by using optical emission spectroscopy and measurement of the m/q analyzed beam currents. The relative changes in both the optical emission and the ion beam current in CW mode as function of microwave power and in amplitude modulation (AM) operation mode are reported. The results indicate a discrepancy between the parametric dependence of high charge state ion densities in the core plasma and their extracted beam currents. The observation implies that in CW mode the ion currents could be li…
Spectroscopic study of ion temperature in minimum-B ECRIS plasma
Experimentally determined ion temperatures of different charge states and elements in minimum-B confined electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) plasma are reported. It is demonstrated with optical emission spectroscopy, complemented by the energy spread measurements of the extracted ion beams, that the ion temperature in the JYFL 14 GHz ECRIS is 5–28 eV depending on the plasma species and charge state. The reported ion temperatures are an order of magnitude higher than previously deduced from indirect diagnostics and used in simulations, but agree with those reported for a quadrupole mirror fusion experiment. The diagnostics setup and data interpretation are discussed in detail to …
Investigation into the gas mixing effect in ECRIS plasma using Kα and optical diagnostics
Mixing a lighter gas species into the plasma of an ECRIS is known to enhance high charge state production of the heavier gas species. With this investigation, Kα diagnostics, optical emission spectroscopy and the measured charge state distribution of the extracted beam were combined to shed more light on the physics governing this phenomenon. Kα diagnostics data from two ion sources, the JYFL 14 GHz ECRIS and the GTS at iThemba LABS, are presented to gain confidence on the observed trends. The results seem to favor ion cooling as the most likely mechanism responsible for the favorable influence of the gas mixing.Mixing a lighter gas species into the plasma of an ECRIS is known to enhance hi…
ECRIS plasma spectroscopy with a high resolution spectrometer
Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) plasmas contain high-energy electrons and highly charged ions implying that only noninvasive methods such as optical emission spectroscopy are reliable in their characterization. A high-resolution spectrometer (10 pm FWHM at 632 nm) enabling the detection of weak emission lines has been developed at University of Jyväskylä, Department of Physics (JYFL) for this purpose. Diagnostics results probing the densities of ions, neutral atoms, and the temperature of the cold electron population in the JYFL 14 GHz ECRIS are described. For example, it has been observed that the cold electron temperature drops from 40 eV to 20 eV when the extraction volta…