European research activities on charge state breeding related to radioactive ion beam facilities.

European effort on charge breeders is mainly dedicated to present and future Radioactive Ion Beam facilities. The main projects are High Intensity and Energy-ISOLDE at CERN, SPIRAL2 at GANIL, and EURISOL. Most of the experimental developments are funded by the European programs EURONS (European Nuclear Structure) and EURISOL (European Isotope Separation On-Line Radioactive Ion Beam Facility). Two ion source types (electron beam ion source and electron cyclotron resonance ion source) have been adapted to accept the injection and the capture of an ion beam, in order to increase its charge with the highest efficiency within the shortest time. Both charge breeders have advantages and disadvantages with regard to their use in a Radioactive Ion Beam facility. The most important parameters studied are acceptance (in emittance and intensity) of the charge breeder, efficiency, and charge breeding time of a specific n+ charge state, emittance of the extracted n+ beam. The charge breeder parameters are studied with different 1+ ion sources dedicated to 1+ radioactive ion beam production, and the tuning procedure of the charge breeder as a beam line section of a specific accelerator is established and measured too.