Production of intense Ca48 ion beam at the U-400 cyclotron

Production of the intense accelerated Ca48 ion beam is the key problem in the experiments on synthesizing of new heavy nuclei. For this purpose an axial injection system with the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR)-4M ion source was created for the U400 cyclotron. The task was to achieve an accelerated beam with an intensity of 0.5 pμA of Ca5+48 at the Ca48 consumption of ∼0.5 mg/h. To solve this problem, a new method for the solid material feed into the ECR source was developed. The combination of a micro oven with a hot tantalum sheet inside the discharge chamber allowed the production of intense beams of ions of metals with relatively low melting point. The present article describes the method, technique, and experimental results on the production of Ca48 ion beam at the U-400 cyclotron from the ECR-4M ion source. The analysis of the working substance balance in the ion source including the ion beam extraction and material regeneration is performed. The analysis based on the experimental data has shown that the efficiency of Ca atom transformation into ion beam is close to that obtained for the gases such as Ar, and the intensity of Ca5+48 constitutes about 20% of the extracted ion beam.