Transport of negative hydrogen and deuterium ions in RF-driven ion sources

Abstract

Negative hydrogen ion sources are major components of neutral beam injection systems for plasma heating in future large-scale fusion experiments such as ITER. In order to fulfill the requirements of the ITER neutral beam injection, a high-performance, large-area RF-driven ion source for negative ions is being developed at the MPI für Plasmaphysik. Negative hydrogen ions are mainly generated on a converter surface by impinging neutral particles and positive ions under the influence of magnetic fields and the plasma sheath potential. The 3D transport code TrajAn has been applied in order to obtain the total and spatially resolved extraction probabilities for H− and D− ions under identical plasma parameters and the realistic magnetic field topology of the ion source. A comparison of the isotopes shows a lower total extraction probability in the case of deuterium ions, caused by a different transport effect. The transport calculation shows that distortions of the spatial distributions of ion birth and extraction by the magnetic electron suppression field are present for both negative hydrogen and deuterium ions.