Electron Beam Ion Source

The Brookhaven Collider-Accelerator Department, with the support of DOE's Office of Nuclear Physics, has successfully developed a new pre-injector system, called the Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS), for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) science programs.

The workhorse injectors for nuclear physics over the past 40 years, and most recently for the RHIC physics program and NSRL radiobiology and physics programs, were two Tandem van de Graaff accelerators. EBIS has significantly better performance than the Tandems. It consists of an electron beam ionization source, followed by a radiofrequency quadrupole linac and an interdigital-H linac. It resides in the 200 MeV proton Linac area and provides all stable ion species from deuterons to uranium, including noble gases such as helium and argon, with much reduced operating costs and greater operational flexibility. EBIS can switch different ion beams to the Booster on a timescale of one second.