Surface Ionization of Radioactive Nuclides - Numerical Simulations

The Monte Carlo method based model of the ionization in the hot cavity taking into account radioactive decay of nuclides is presented. The code upgraded compared to the previous version enables calculation of the ion source ionization efficiency not only for different geometries and temperatures of the ionizer, extraction voltages etc. but also gives opportunity of setting different values of the nuclide half-life and its sticking time, which may be considered as the main factor determining the time that a particle spends in the ion source. The results of calculations are presented together with the discussion of the radioactive decay on the ion source performance.