Reduction of gas flow into a hollow cathode ion source for a neutral beam injector

Abstract

Experimental studies have been made on the reduction of the gas flow rate into ion sources which utilize a hollow cathode. The electron emitter of the hollow cathode was a barium oxide impregnated porous tungsten tube. The hollow cathode was mounted to a circular or a rectangular bucket source and the following results were obtained. There was a tendency for the minimum gas flow rate for the stable source operation to decrease with increasing orifice diameter of the hollow cathode up to 10 mm. A molybdenum button with an appropriate diameter set in front of the orifice reduced the minimum gas flow rate to one half of that without button. An external magnetic field applied antiparallel to the field generated by the heater current stabilized the discharges and reduced the minimum gas flow rate to one half of that without field. Combination of the button and the antiparallel field reduced the minimum gas flow rate from the initial value (9.5 Torr 1/s) to 2.4 Torr 1/s. The reason for these effects was discussed on the basis of the theory for arc starvation.