Speaker
Description
The ISBM (Ion Sources and Beam Manipulation) team at ISOLDE is dedicated to the development and application of advanced techniques for radioactive ion beam (RIB) purification and preparation. This includes molecular beam extraction, laser ionization and background suppression methods, specialized devices such as fast beam gates, timed beam delivery systems, ion traps, and a variety of specialized ion sources. Two major ongoing projects illustrate these efforts: the central beamline switching of CA0 and fast beam gating.
The beam switching project addresses one of ISOLDE’s central challenges: the demand for RIB beam time far exceeds supply, with a backlog of shifts awaiting scheduling. To increase efficiency, ISOLDE aims to transition from a single user to a multi-user facility. The proposed automated beam switching system will enable alternating delivery of beams from the General-Purpose Separator (GPS) and the High-Resolution Separator (HRS) on a pulse-to-pulse basis, allowing two experiments to run in parallel. Recent tests with solid-state switching confirmed the technical feasibility of sub-microsecond switching times of arbitrary voltages up to 5kV, paving the way for integration into ISOLDE’s infrastructure and potentially increasing operational days by 20–30 per year.
Closely related is the fast beam gate project, which underpins the switching scheme. ISOLDE’s existing beam gate system has faced persistent reliability issues since 2021, stemming from outdated hardware and incomplete upgrades. A new generation of beam gates is being developed to support high-frequency operation (up to 10 kHz) for laser-ion time-of-flight gating and to achieve microsecond-level beam control with full remote operation and logging.
It is foreseen that the developments in beam switching and beam gating will significantly enhance ISOLDE’s capacity, flexibility, and experimental throughput post LS3.
