Diagnostics of plasma decay and afterglow transient of an electron cyclotron resonance ion source

The electron cyclotron resonance ion sources at the JYFL (University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Physics) accelerator laboratory have been operated in pulsed mode to study the decay of bremsstrahlung emission and ion beam currents of different charge states. The purpose of the experiments is to gain understanding on the ion source parameters affecting the afterglow. It was observed that the bremsstrahlung emission characteristics during the afterglow and decay times of extracted ion beam currents are virtually independent of the ion source tuning parameters. The decay time of different charge states was found to be almost inversely proportional to the square of the ion charge. The result is in good agreement with a simple theoretical model based on diffusion of ions from the magnetic field of the ion source. It was observed that the plasma decay time is shorter in the case of the ion source with lower operation frequency and, thus, lower magnetic field strength. The scaling between the ion sources supports a model based on Bohm diffusion, arising from non-linear effects such as instabilities and fluctuating fields in turbulent plasma. The experiments provide information on the mechanisms causing instabilities during the plasma decay.