Development of a new superconducting Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source for operations up to 18 GHz at LBNL.

A new superconducting Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS) is under development at LBNL to harness the winding techniques of a closed-loop sextupole coil for the next generation ECRIS and to enhance the capability of the 88-in. cyclotron facility. The proposed ECRIS will use a superconducting closed-loop sextupole coil to produce the radial field and a substantial portion of the axial field. The field strengths of the injection, central and extraction regions are adjusted by a three solenoids outside the closed-loop sextupole coil. In addition to maintaining the typical ECRIS magnetic field configuration, this new source will also be able to produce a dustpan-like minimum-B field to explore possible ECRIS performance enhancement. The dustpan-like minimum-B field configuration has about the same strengths for the maximum axial field at the injection region and the maximum radial pole fields at the plasma chamber walls but it can be substantially lower at the extraction region. The dustpan-like minimum-B will have a field maximum Bmax ≥ 2.6 T for operations up to 18 GHz with a ratio of Bmax/Bres ≥ 4 and higher ratios for lower frequencies. The field maxima of this new source can reach over 3 T both at the injection and the plasma chamber walls which could also support operation at 28 GHz. The source will be built of cryogen-free with the magnets directly cooled by cryo-coolers to simplify the cryostat structure. The source design features will be presented and discussed.

A superconducting transformer system for high current cable testing.

This article describes the development of a direct-current (dc) superconducting transformer system for the high current test of superconducting cables. The transformer consists of a core-free 10,464 turn primary solenoid which is enclosed by a 6.5 turn secondary. The transformer is designed to deliver a 50 kA dc secondary current at a dc primary current of about 50 A. The secondary current is measured inductively using two toroidal-wound Rogowski coils. The Rogowski coil signal is digitally integrated, resulting in a voltage signal that is proportional to the secondary current. This voltage signal is used to control the secondary current using a feedback loop which automatically compensates for resistive losses in the splices to the superconducting cable samples that are connected to the secondary. The system has been commissioned up to 28 kA secondary current. The reproducibility in the secondary current measurement is better than 0.05% for the relevant current range up to 25 kA. The drift in the secondary current, which results from drift in the digital integrator, is estimated to be below 0.5 A/min. The system's performance is further demonstrated through a voltage-current measurement on a superconducting cable sample at 11 T background magnetic field. The superconducting transformer system enables fast, high resolution, economic, and safe tests of the critical current of superconducting cable samples.

Nb3Sn superconducting magnets for electron cyclotron resonance ion sources.

Electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion sources are an essential component of heavy-ion accelerators. Over the past few decades advances in magnet technology and an improved understanding of the ECR ion source plasma physics have led to remarkable performance improvements of ECR ion sources. Currently third generation high field superconducting ECR ion sources operating at frequencies around 28 GHz are the state of the art ion injectors and several devices are either under commissioning or under design around the world. At the same time, the demand for increased intensities of highly charged heavy ions continues to grow, which makes the development of even higher performance ECR ion sources a necessity. To extend ECR ion sources to frequencies well above 28 GHz, new magnet technology will be needed in order to operate at higher field and force levels. The superconducting magnet program at LBNL has been developing high field superconducting magnets for particle accelerators based on Nb(3)Sn superconducting technology for several years. At the moment, Nb(3)Sn is the only practical conductor capable of operating at the 15 T field level in the relevant configurations. Recent design studies have been focused on the possibility of using Nb(3)Sn in the next generation of ECR ion sources. In the past, LBNL has worked on the VENUS ECR, a 28 GHz source with solenoids and a sextupole made with NbTi operating at fields of 6-7 T. VENUS has now been operating since 2004. We present in this paper the design of a Nb(3)Sn ECR ion source optimized to operate at an rf frequency of 56 GHz with conductor peak fields of 13-15 T. Because of the brittleness and strain sensitivity of Nb(3)Sn, particular care is required in the design of the magnet support structure, which must be capable of providing support to the coils without overstressing the conductor. In this paper, we present the main features of the support structure, featuring an external aluminum shell pretensioned with water-pressurized bladders, and we analyze the expected coil stresses with a two-dimensional finite element mechanical model.

Knot undulator to generate linearly polarized photons with low on-axis power density.

Heat load on beamline optics is a serious obstacle for devices designed to generate pure linearly polarized photons in third generation synchrotron radiation facilities. For permanent magnet undulators, this problem can be overcome by implementing a figure-eight design configuration. As yet there has been no good method to tackle this problem for electromagnetic elliptical undulators. Here, a novel design and operational mode is suggested, which can generate pure linearly polarized photons with very low on-axis heat load. Additionally, the minimum photon energy capability of linearly polarized photons can be significantly extended by this method.

Fourth generation electron cyclotron resonance ion sources.

The concepts and technical challenges related to developing a fourth generation electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source with a rf frequency greater than 40 GHz and magnetic confinement fields greater than twice B(ECR) will be explored in this article. Based on the semiempirical frequency scaling of ECR plasma density with the square of operating frequency, there should be significant gains in performance over current third generation ECR ion sources, which operate at rf frequencies between 20 and 30 GHz. While the third generation ECR ion sources use NbTi superconducting solenoid and sextupole coils, the new sources will need to use different superconducting materials, such as Nb(3)Sn, to reach the required magnetic confinement, which scales linearly with rf frequency. Additional technical challenges include increased bremsstrahlung production, which may increase faster than the plasma density, bremsstrahlung heating of the cold mass, and the availability of high power continuous wave microwave sources at these frequencies. With each generation of ECR ion sources, there are new challenges to be mastered, but the potential for higher performance and reduced cost of the associated accelerator continues to make this a promising avenue for development.