Application of Traveling Wave Tubes (TWT) to ECRIS Plasmas

Summary form only given. A remarkable increase of highly charged ion beam current was observed when the electron cyclotron resonance ion source SERSE used a traveling wave tube-based generator (TWT) in place of a klystron, usually coupled to plasma chamber to sustain the ECRIS plasma. The preliminary results obtained with a different ion source were confirmed by the systematic measurements carried out recently as described in the paper. The analysis of the signal emitted from the generators will be discussed along with a possible explanation of the phenomenon in terms of the depth of the potential well