Physical principles of the preglow effect and scaling of its basic parameters for electron cyclotron resonance sources of multicharged ions

A study of pulsed mode operation of modern ECR ion sources has clearly demonstrated the reality of an unexpected transient current peak, occurring at the very beginning of the plasma breakdown. This regime was named the preglow, as an explicit reference to the afterglow occurring at the microwave pulse end. After the transient preglow peak, the plasma regime relaxes to the classical steady state one. During last three years, a lot of experimental data together with first theoretical interpretations were published. The present paper is a continuation of previous investigations by the authors and contains full description of the preglow effect physical principles. Analysis of preglow parameters dependences on properties of microwave radiation used for plasma heating is presented. Some kind of preglow scaling for ECRIS is proposed.