An experimental study of ECRIS plasma stability and oscillation of beam current

The stability of oxygen ion beams extracted from ECR ion sources has been studied with the superconducting ion source VENUS at LBNL and with the A-ECR type 14 GHz ECRIS at JYFL. Discrete Fourier transform has been used for characterizing beam current oscillations in kHz range exhibited by both ion sources. The effect of source parameters on the frequency and amplitude of the oscillations is discussed. It was found that double frequency heating affects the oscillation frequency, biased disc can be used to mitigate the amplitude of beam current fluctuations, increasing B-minimum results to pronounced instabilities and operating the ion source with significantly higher mirror ratio than suggested by ECRIS scaling laws yields the most stable ion beams. It is argued that the observed beam current fluctuations are correlated with plasma instabilities. A 'roadmap' for identifying the plasma instability mechanisms responsible for beam current fluctuations is presented.