Simulation of ion beam scattering in a gas stripper

Abstract

Ion beam scattering in the gas stripper of an accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) enlarges the beam phase space and broadens its energy distribution. As the size of the injected beam depends on the acceleration voltage through phase space compression, the stripper becomes a limiting factor of the overall system transmission especially for low energy AMS system in the sub MV region. The spatial beam broadening and collisions with the accelerator tube walls are a possible source for machine background and energy loss fluctuations influence the mass resolution and thus isotope separation. To investigate the physical processes responsible for these effects, a computer simulation approach was chosen. Monte Carlo simulation methods are applied to simulate elastic two body scattering processes in screened Coulomb potentials in a (gas) stripper and formulas are derived to correctly determine random collision parameters and free path lengths for arbitrary (and non-homogeneous) gas densities. A simple parametric form for the underlying scattering cross sections is discussed which features important scaling behaviors. An implementation of the simulation was able to correctly model the data gained with the TANDY AMS system at ETH Zurich. The experiment covered transmission measurements of uranium ions in helium and beam profile measurements after the ion beam passed through the He-stripper. Beam profiles measured up to very high stripper densities could be understood in full system simulations including the relevant ion optics. The presented model therefore simulates the fundamental physics of the interaction between an ion beam and a gas stripper reliably. It provides a powerful and flexible tool for optimizing existing AMS stripper geometries and for designing new, state of the art low energy AMS systems.