Hot Cathode’s Working Voltage Impacts on the Operation of High Current Ion Source

High power ion source is one of the important parts of the neutral beam injection. It produces high energy beam by extracting and accelerating ions from its arc chamber. The hot cathode (filaments) in the arc chamber of the ion source operates in two modes. Operation mode of the cathode has great effect on the stable operation of the ion source. Based on the theory of hot cathode and experimental results, this paper presents the operation results (beam current, arc efficiency) of an ion source with various cathode temperatures (controlled by voltage applied to the cathode).