Numerical model of Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical particle-in-cell model of an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source that accurately reproduces key operational features and provides insights into ion confinement and extraction processes.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical simulation approach for ECRIS using particle-in-cell technique, validating gas dynamical confinement and analyzing parameter effects.

Findings

Gas dynamical ion confinement explains observed ion production rates.

Extracted ion currents match experimental data for multiple sources.

Scaling laws and physical effects in ECRIS are analyzed.

Abstract

Important features of Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) operation are accurately reproduced with a numerical code. The code uses the particle-in-cell technique to model a dynamics of ions in ECRIS plasma. It is shown that gas dynamical ion confinement mechanism is sufficient to provide the ion production rates in ECRIS close to the experimentally observed values. Extracted ion currents are calculated and compared to the experiment for few sources. Changes in the extracted ion currents are obtained with varying the gas flow into the source chamber and the microwave power. Empirical scaling laws for ECRIS design are studied and the underlying physical effects are discussed.