Operational experience with the Argonne National Laboratory Californium Rare Ion Breeder Upgrade facility and electron cyclotron resonance charge breeder

Abstract

The Californium Rare Ion Breeder Upgrade (CARIBU) of the Argonne National Laboratory Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) facility provides low-energy and accelerated neutron-rich radioactive beams to address key nuclear physics and astrophysics questions. A 350 mCi (252)Cf source produces fission fragments which are thermalized and collected by a helium gas catcher into a low-energy particle beam with a charge of 1+ or 2+. An electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source functions as a charge breeder in order to raise the ion charge sufficiently for acceleration in the ATLAS linac. The ECR charge breeder has achieved stable beam charge breeding efficiencies of 10.1% for (23)Na(7+), 17.9% for (39)K(10+), 15.6% for (84)Kr(17+), and 12.4% for (133)Cs(27+). For the radioactive beams, a charge breeding efficiency of 11.7% has been achieved for (143)Cs(27+) and 14.7% for (143)Ba(27+). The typical breeding times are 10 ms/charge state, but the source can be tuned such that this value increases to 100 ms/charge state with the best breeding efficiency corresponding to the longest breeding times-the variation of efficiencies with breeding time will be discussed. Efforts have been made to characterize and reduce the background contaminants present in the ion beam through judicious choice of q/m combinations. Methods of background reduction are being investigated based upon plasma chamber cleaning and vacuum practices.