Linear radio frequency quadrupole for the cooling and bunching of radioactive ion beams

Abstract

A linear radio frequency quadrupole has been built for the transport, cooling, and bunching of radioactive ions extracted from an ECR source. The device uses the buffer gas cooling technique and was designed such as to extend the technique for the cooling of very light ions using H2 as buffer gas. We describe here the technical specifications of the device and present results of the first tests concerning the cooling and bunching of stable ions.