Demonstration of High-Efficiency Microwave Heating Producing Record Highly Charged Xenon Ion Beams with Superconducting ECR Ion Sources

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2406.13448
• Publication Date: 2024-01-01
• Authors: Wang, X.; Li, J. B.; Mironov, V.; Guo, J. W.; Zhang, X. Z.; Tarvainen, O.; Feng, Y. C.; Li, L. X.; Ma, J. D.; Zhang, Z. H.; Lu, W.; Bogomolov, S.; Sun, L.; Zhao, H. W.
• Keywords: Accelerator Physics (physics.acc-ph); Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph); FOS: Physical sciences; Physics - Accelerator Physics; Physics - Plasma Physics

Intense highly charged ion beam production is essential for high-power heavy ion accelerators. A novel movable Vlasov launcher for superconducting high charge state Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion source has been devised that can affect the microwave power effectiveness by a factor of about 4 in terms of highly charged ion beam production. This approach based on a dedicated microwave launching system instead of the traditional coupling scheme has led to new insight on microwave-plasma interaction. With this new understanding, the world record highly charged xenon ion beam currents have been enhanced by up to a factor of 2, which could directly and significantly enhance the performance of heavy ion accelerators and provide many new research opportunities in nuclear physics, atomic physics and other disciplines.