Improving Negative Ion Beam Quality And Purity With A RF Quadrupole Cooler

Abstract

Recent progress in the development of a gas-filled RF quadrupole ion cooler for cooling negative ions is reported. Experiments demonstrate that negative ion beams can be cooled to 2 eV FWHM energy spread with more than 50% transmission through the cooler. The RFQ cooler can potentially improve the purity of radioactive ion beams by magnetic mass separation. New developments on purifying negative ion beams by photodetachment in the RFQ cooler are presented. With a laser of proper photon energy, nearly 100% suppression of the unwanted negative ions in the RFQ cooler has been observed, while the desired ions remain mostly intact. A recent experimental study demonstrates that pure ground state negation ion beams can be obtained by state-selective photodetachment in the RFQ cooler.