First Commissioning Results of the Multicusp Ion Source at MIT (MIST-1) for H$_2^+$

IsoDAR is an experiment under development to search for sterile neutrinos using the isotope Decay-At-Rest (DAR) production mechanism, where protons impinging on 9Be create neutrons which capture on 7Li which then beta-decays producing ve. As this will be an isotropic source of ve, the primary driver current must be large (10 mA cw) for IsoDAR to have sufficient statistics to be conclusive within 5 years of running. H2+ was chosen as primary ion to overcome some of the space-charge limitations during low energy beam transport and injection into a compact cyclotron. The H2+ will be stripped into protons before the target. At MIT, a multicusp ion source (MIST-1) was designed and built to produce a high intensity beam with a high H2+ fraction. MIST-1 is now operational at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) at MIT and under commissioning.
National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Grant PHY-1505858)
Bose Foundation