Intensity measurements of polarized beams from an atomic beam polarized ion source

Abstract

Beam intensity measurements have been carried out for neutral and ionic beams from the atomic beam polarized ion source at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia. The intensity of the polarized hydrogen beam was measured at several points in the source. The intensity of the neutral atomic beam was measured at the end of the atomic beam chamber. The measurement was carries out by measuring the sextupole on-off pressure difference with a vacuum gauge, which was mounted in a compression tube attached to the atomic beam chamber. It was observed that mixing of the source gas hydrogen with nitrogen increased the polarized beam intensity by a factor of 2 at 33 K. The maximum beam intensity was measured to be 1.6 × 10 16 atoms/s at 33K temperature of the nozzle. For the ionic beam, a current of 41 μA has been measured after the ionizer, while a current of 23 μA has been measured for mass selected H ∗ ions after the spin processor. The unpolarized background was low for mass selected H ∗ ions and a beam polarization of 86% was measured for the H ∗ beam using the sextupole on-off current ratio.