Program to Improve the Ion Beam Formation and Transmission at JYFL

The increased requirements towards the use of higher ion beam intensities motivated us to initiate the project to improve the overall transmission efficiency of the K130 cyclotron facility at JYFL. A similar project has earlier been started at the NSCL/MSU (National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory/Michigan State University) where a remarkable improvement in the ion beam transmission has been obtained [1]. Since similar improvement plans were considered at the KVI (Kernfysisch Versneller Instituut) the natural choice was to carry out the common improvement work in collaboration between the afore-mentioned laboratories. In this article we present the beam transport efficiency of the JYFL cyclotron facility in different operation conditions, the experiments to discover the “bottle-necks” and plans to solve the problems. The objective of this program is to double the accelerated beam intensity of medium charge states. The Ar8+ ion beam is used as a benchmark, which at present the maximum intensity is about 8 μA after the cyclotron