A Study of the Cyclotron Gas-Stopping Concept for the Production of Rare Isotope Beams

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates the cyclotron gas-stopping concept for rare isotope beam production, revealing limitations of previous designs and proposing a larger-gap device that could significantly improve efficiency.

Contribution

It provides detailed simulations showing the inefficiency of earlier designs and suggests a new, larger-gap geometry that could achieve high stopping efficiency and acceptance.

Findings

Original geometry has near-zero efficiency

Larger-gap device can reach ~90% efficiency

Acceptance can be increased by at least 10 times

Abstract

The proposed cyclotron gas-stopping scheme for the efficient thermalization of intense rare isotope beams is examined. Simulations expand on previous studies and expose many complications of such an apparatus arising from physical effects not accounted for properly in previous work. The previously proposed cyclotron gas-stopper geometry is found to have a near null efficiency, but extended simulations suggest that a device with a much larger pole gap could achieve a stopping efficiency approaching roughly 90% and at least a 10 times larger acceptance. However, some of the advantages that were incorrectly predicted in previous simulations for high intensity operation of this device are compromised.