Multipurpose superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source, the European roadmap to third-generation electron cyclotron resonance ion sources

Abstract

The major infrastructures of nuclear physics in Europe adopted the technology of electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion sources for the production of heavy-ion beams. Most of them use 14GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion sources (ECRISs), except at INFN-LNS, where an 18GHz superconducting ECRIS is in operation. In the past five years it was demonstrated, in the frame of the EU-FP5 RTD project called “Innovative ECRIS,” that further enhancement of the performances requires a higher frequency (28GHz and above) and a higher magnetic field (above 2.2T) for the hexapolar field. Within the EU-FP6 a joint research activity named ISIBHI has been established to build by 2008 two different ion sources, the A-PHOENIX source at LPSC Grenoble, reported in another contribution, and the multipurpose superconducting ECRIS (MS-ECRIS), based on fully superconducting magnets, able to operate in High B mode at a frequency of 28GHz or higher. Such a development represents a significant step compared to existing devices, and an increase of typically a factor of 10 for the intensity is expected (e.g., 1emA for medium charge states of heavy ions, or hundreds of eμA of fully stripped light ions, or even 1eμA of charge states above 50+ for the heaviest species). The challenging issue is the very high level of magnetic field, never achieved by a minimum B trap magnet system; the maximum magnetic field of MS-ECRIS will be higher than 4 or 5T for the axial field and close to 2.7T for the hexapolar field. The detailed description of the MS-ECRIS project and of its major constraints will be given along with the general issues of the developments under way.