Comparative analysis of recirculating and collimating cesium ovens

TL;DR

This study compares recirculating and collimating cesium oven designs to determine the most efficient for beam brightness, but faces reproducibility issues and finds similar low flux levels across designs.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of cesium oven designs and discusses potential improvements based on surface sticking behavior.

Findings

Observed similar flux levels in both designs, close to the theoretical minimum.

Reproducibility issues hinder definitive conclusions on optimal design.

Surface material and cleaning influence cesium sticking and oven performance.

Abstract

We have performed a study of several cesium oven designs. A comparison between recirculating (or sticking-wall) or collimating (or reemitting-wall) ovens is made in order to extract the most efficient design in terms of beam brightness. Unfortunately, non-reproducible behaviors have been observed, and the most often observed output flux is similar to the sticking-wall case, which is the lowest theoretical value of the two cases, with a beam brightness close to $10^{18}$ at.sr$^{-1}$.s$^{-1}$.cm$^{-2}$. The reason of this universally observed behavior is unclear despite having tested several materials for the collimating tube. Conclusion on possible improved design based on sticking of cesium on several (un)cleaned surface is given.