Low-Energy
Ion Beam Transport
One important aspect of the LEBIT project is an efficient transport of the
low-energy beams. The beam has to be transported from the gas-stopping
cell to the RFQ buncher, and finally to
the Penning trap mass
spectrometer. Switchyards
have to be foreseen for the delivery of the beam to other experimental stations
(laser spectroscopy, decay studies) and for the injection of beams from test ion
sources. Since the beam energy is
low (<60 keV) an electrostatic transport system has been chosen. It has the
particular advantage that the beam transport is mass independent. This makes
switching between different ion species easy and fast. The beam transport
elements used are Einzel lenses, electrostatic quadrupole lenses and deflectors.
A large number of ion beam simulations have been performed
using various programs like SIMION 7, COSY Infinity and our own transport codes. An
important aspect was to maintain as good as possible the original beam
quality.