Development of electron cyclotron resonance heavy ion source

A multiply charged heavy ion (MCHI) beam is a major scientific ingredient to explore many new fields of research over a wide energy range (from a few eV to a few TeV). The basic requirement is to have an ion source that will produce highly charged (Z) high intensity ion beam with low emittance over the entire mass range and will work stably over a long time and having 100% duty cycle. These are very useful requirements in accelerator applications in particular. Performance of present day Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) has almost fulfilled all the above conditions. In ECRIS, high-Z ions are produced by subjecting low-Z ions in a plasma to successive impact of hot electrons, which are efficiently energized by rf power, the frequency of which equals the cyclotron frequency of the electrons in the magnetic field. The emphasis on ECRIS development has been to increase electron temperature Te and nτ factor, where n is electron density and τ is the ion confinement time, which in turn is related to plasma confinement and stability. In this paper the development on ECRIS and the experiences with the 6.4 GHz ECRIS indigenously built at the VEC centre will be briefly presented. (author). 32 refs., 9 figs., 2 tabs