Currently, ECR ion sources provide intense high charge state ions to most heavy-ion accelerators used in nuclear physics research. Since their invention in the early 70’s their performance, sophistication and complexity have steadily increased, driven by the nuclear physics community’s need for more intense and higher energy beams. Frequency scaling in the ECR ion sources has provided a path for gains in performance, while the performance of other ion source technologies such as Penning Ion Gauge ion sources or Electron Beam ion sources has changed little in the last few decades. As the focus of low energy nuclear physics moves to radioactive ion beam accelerators such as RIBF at RIKEN Japan, FAIR at GSI, and FRIB in the United States, third generation ECR ion sources are being developed to meet these demands.

In this talk, I will describe the evolution of ECR ion sources from plasma fusion experiments in the 1960’s to today’s sources, discuss the underlying atomic and plasma physics of producing high charge state ions and discuss the technical challenges and potential benefits associated with going beyond the present 3rd generation ECR ion sources designed to operate at a microwave frequency of 28 GHz to 4th generation ECR ion sources designed to operate above 50 GHz

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule