Metal evaporation dynamics in electron cyclotron resonance ion sources: plasma role in the atom diffusion, ionisation, and transport

We present a numerical study of metals dynamics evaporated through resistively heated ovens in electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma traps, used as metal ion beam injectors for accelerators and multi-disciplinary research in plasma physics. We use complementary numerical methods to perform calculations in the framework of the PANDORA trap. The diffusion and deposition of metal vapours at the plasma chamber’s surface are explored under molecular flow regime, with stationary and time-dependent particle fluid calculations via COMSOL Multiphysics®. The ionisation of vapours is then studied in the strongly energised ECR plasma. We have developed a Monte Carlo (MC) code to simulate the in-plasma metal ions’ dynamics, coupled to particle-in-cell simulations of the plasma physics in the trap. The presence of strongly inhomogeneous plasmas leads to charge-exchange and electron-impact ionisations of metals, in turn affecting the deposition rate/pattern of the metal on the walls of the trap. Results show how vapours dynamics depends both on evaporated metals and the plasma target. The ¹³⁴Cs, ¹⁷⁶Lu, and ⁴⁸Ca isotopes were investigated, the first two being radioisotopes interesting for the PANDORA project, and the third as one of the most required rare isotope by the nuclear physics community. We present an application of the study: MC computing the γ activity due to the deposited radioactive neutral nuclei during the measurement time, we quantitatively estimated the overall γ-detection system’s efficiency using GEANT4, including the poisoning γ-signal from the walls of the trap, relevant for the γ-tagging of short-lived nuclei’s decay rate in the PANDORA experiment. This work can give valuable support both to the evaporation technique and plasma source optimisation, for improving the metal ion beam production, avoiding huge deposit/waste of metals known to affect the long-term source stability, as well as for radio-safety aspects and reducing material waste in case of rare isotopes.