Particle-in-Cell Simulations of the Venus Ion Beam Tranpsort System

The next-generation superconducting ECR ion source VENUS serves as the prototype injector ion source for the linac driver of the proposed Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA). The high-intensity heavy ion beams required by the RIA driver linac present significant challenges for the design and simulation of an ECR extraction and low energy ion beam transport system. Extraction and beam formation take place in a strong (up to 3T) axial magnetic field, which leads to significantly different focusing properties for the different ion masses and charge states of the extracted beam. Typically, beam simulations must take into account the contributions of up to 30 different charge states and ion masses. Two three-dimensional, particle-in-cell codes developed for other purposes, IMPACT and WARP, have been adapted in order to model intense, multi-species DC beams. A discussion of the differences of these codes and the advantages of each in the simulation of the low energy beam transport system of an ECR ion source is given. Direct comparisons of results from these two codes as well as with experimental results from VENUS are presented.