Emittance improvement of the electron cyclotron resonance high intensity light ion source proton beam by gas injection in the low energy beam transport

SILHI is the ECR high intensity light ion source studied in France at C.E.A. Saclay. This is the source for the injector of the high intensity proton injector prototype developed by a CNRS-IN2P3 collaboration. 80 mA at 95 keV beams with a rms normalized r–r′ emittance lower than 0.3 π mm mrad and a proton fraction better than 85% are currently produced. Recently, it has been found that the injection in the low energy beam transport of a buffer gas had a strong effect on the emittance measured 1 m downstream of the focusing solenoid. By adding several gases (H2, N2, Ar, Kr), improvements as great as a factor of 3 have been observed. The emittance has been measured by means of an r–r′ emittance measurement unit equipped with a sampling hole and a wire profile monitor, both moving across the beam. Simultaneously, the space charge compensation factor is measured using a four-grid analyzer unit. In this article all results of these experiments are presented and discussed. A first explanation of the emittance r...