Performance of Anl Ecr Breeder with Low Mass Beams

The CAlifornium Rare Isotope Breeder Upgrade (CARIBU) is a new radioactive beam facility for the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS). The facility utilizes a Cf fission source coupled with an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source to provide radioactive beam species for the ATLAS experimental program. The californium fission fragment distribution provides nuclei in the mid-mass range which are difficult to extract from production targets using the isotope separation on line (ISOL) technique and are not well populated by low-energy fission of uranium. To date the charge breeding program has focused on optimizing these mid-mass beams, achieving high charge breeding efficiencies of both gaseous and solid species including 14.7% for the radioactive species Ba. In an effort to better understand the charge breeding mechanism, we have recently focused on the low-mass species sodium and potassium which up to present have been difficult to charge breed efficiently. Unprecedented charge breeding efficiencies of 10.1% for Na and 17.9% for K were obtained injecting stable Na and K beams from a surface ionization source.