Status of the electrostatic plasma lens

The electrostatic plasma lens provides an important tool for the manipulation of high current heavy ion beams with moderate energy of 1–100 keV. Applications can include, for example, high dose ion implantation and particle accelerator injection. Here we briefly review the plasma lens (PL) fundamentals and summarize some recent developments and experiments performed at the Institute of Physics NASU (Kiev) and LBNL (Berkeley). We also describe progress in experimental investigations of the nonlinear electron vortex structures that arise due to the drift instability in the high current plasma lens, and lens operation in the low magnetic field regime. We show that there is a very narrow range of low magnetic field for which the focusing properties of the PL improve markedly. Under these conditions a significant decrease (by more than an order of magnitude) in the amplitude of oscillations in the lens volume and focused ion beam are observed.