NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF ION-BEAM RELATED PROBLEMS

The extraction of ions from a plasma source has been investigated by computer simulation for many years. The development of these computer codes started from the simulation of electron guns. The extraction of plasma ion sources for positive ion sources was optimized soon after. Now ion sources with magnetic fields can be simulated (electron cyclotron resonance or PIG sources) and even three component plasmas (for example, H- sources) can be modeled. The necessary computing time for these codes has shrunk from hours to minutes and even seconds on modern main frames. Different computer codes and the applied techniques are presented. The programs are demonstrated using several examples.