Gas mixing and double frequency operation of the permanent magnet quadrupole minimum-B electron cyclotron resonance ion source CUBE-ECRIS

Abstract CUBE-ECRIS is a recently commissioned permanent magnet electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source developed at the university of Jyväskylä accelerator laboratory. The special features of the new ion source design include an unconventional quadrupole minimum-B magnetic field structure and a slit beam extraction system necessitated by the line-shaped plasma loss fluxes. Gas mixing and double frequency operation are widely used methods to optimize high charge state ion production of conventional ECR ion sources. The work presented here demonstrates the applicability of these methods for boosting the high charge state beam currents of argon, krypton and xenon extracted from CUBE-ECRIS. Oxygen and helium were used as mixing gases and microwave frequencies between 10 and 11 GHz were used for single and double frequency operation. Gas mixing has a strong impact on the high charge state beam currents. For example, the highest observed charge state increased from 15+ to 19+ for krypton and from 16+ to 23+ for xenon with oxygen gas mixing. Double frequency operation provides an additional performance improvement, for example the currents of argon 9+ and 11+ beams, produced with gas mixing, increased 30% and 100% in double frequency operation at the same total power.