Simulation Study of Optimizing Multicusp Magnetic Line Configurations for a Negative Hydrogen Ion Source

A multicusp ion source has been used widely in negative hydrogen cyclotrons mainly for radioisotope productions. The ion source is designed to have cusp geometries of magnetic field inside plasma chamber, where ions are confining and their mean lifetimes increase. The magnetic confinement produced a number of permanent magnetic poles helps to increase beam currents and reduce the emittance. Therefore optimizing the number of magnets confining more ions and increasing their mean lifetime in plasma has to be investigated in order to improve the performance of the ion source. In this work a numerical simulation of the magnetic flux density from a number of permanent magnets is carried to optimize the cusp geometries producing the highest plasma density, which is clearly indicated along the full-line cusp geometry. The effect of magnetic fields and a number of poles on the plasma structure are investigated by a computing tool. The electron confinement effect becomes stronger and the density increases with increasing the number of poles. On the contrary, the escape of electrons from the loss cone becomes more frequent as the pole number increases [1]. To understand above observation the electron and ion's trajectories along with different cusp geometries are simulated. The simulation has been shown that the optimized numbers of magnets can improve the ion density and uniformity.