Support gas, when added directly to an arc or admitted to an auxiliary chamber of a two-arc chamber ion source, increases the beam intensity for multicharged ions such as /sup 16/O/sup 5 +/. To clarify the mechanism of this intensity increase, gas flow rates from the auxiliary chamber to the main chamber have been measured by using the ORIC cyclotron as a mass spectrometer. The results show that only about three percent of the gas admitted to the auxiliary chamber reaches the main chamber. One can then infer that the improved operation probably results from the stabilizing effect of heating the common cathodes with the auxiliary arc and/or the more favorable distribution of the support gas to the part of the main arc close to the cathodes
