Production of high-brightness continuous wave proton beams with very high proton fractions a

This article demonstrates a new technique to significantly enhance the proton fraction of an ion beam extracted from a plasma ion source. We employ a magnetically confined microwave driven source, though the technique is not source specific and can probably be applied equally effectively to other plasma sources such as Penning and multicusp types. Specifically, we dope the plasma with about 1% H2O, which increases the proton fraction of a 45 keV 45 mA beam from 75% to 90% with 375 W 2.45 GHz power to the source and from 84% to 92% for 500 W when the source is operated under nonresonant conditions. Much of the remaining fraction of the beam comprises a heavy mass ion we believe to be N+ impurity ions resulting from the conditions under which the experiments were performed. If so, this impurity can easily be removed and much higher proton fractions could be expected. Preliminary measurements show the additive has no adverse effect on the emittance of the extracted beam, and source stability is greatly improved