Superconducting elliptical cavities

We give a brief overview of the history, state of the art, and future for elliptical superconducting cavities. Principles of the cell shape optimization, criteria for multi-cell structures design, HOM damping schemes and other features are discussed along with examples of superconducting structures for various applications.Comment: 25 pages, contribution to the CAS - CERN Accelerator School: Specialised Course on RF for Accelerators; 8 - 17 Jun 2010, Ebeltoft, Denmar

SRF Cavity Fabrication and Materials

The technological and metallurgical requirements of material for highgradient superconducting cavities are described. High-purity niobium, as the preferred metal for the fabrication of superconducting accelerating cavities, should meet exact specifications. The content of interstitial impurities such as oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon must be below 10{\mu}g/g. The hydrogen content should be kept below 2{\mu}g/g to prevent degradation of the Q-value under certain cool-down conditions. The material should be free of flaws (foreign material inclusions or cracks and laminations) that can initiate a thermal breakdown. Defects may be detected by quality control methods such as eddy current scanning and identified by a number of special methods. Conventional and alternative cavity fabrication methods are reviewed. Conventionally, niobium cavities are fabricated from sheet niobium by the formation of half-cells by deep drawing, followed by trim machining and Electron-Beam Welding (EBW). The welding of half-cells is a delicate procedure, requiring intermediate cleaning steps and a careful choice of weld parameters to achieve full penetration of the joints. The equator welds are particularly critical. A challenge for a welded construction is the tight mechanical and electrical tolerances. These can be maintained by a combination of mechanical and radio-frequency measurements on halfcells and by careful tracking of weld shrinkage. The established procedure is suitable for large series production. The main aspects of quality assurance management are mentioned. Another cavity fabrication approach is slicing discs from the ingot and producing cavities by deep drawing and EBW. Accelerating gradients at the level of 35-45 MV.m-1 can be achieved by applying Electropolishing (EP) treatment....Comment: 37 pages, contribution to the CAS-CERN Accelerator School: Superconductivity for Accelerators, Erice, Italy, 24 April - 4 May 2013, edited by R. Baile

On the Response of an OST to a Point-like Heat Source

A new technique of superconducting cavity diagnostics has been introduced by D. Hartrill at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Oscillating Superleak Transducers (OST) detect the heat transferred from a cavity's quench point via "Second Sound" through the superfluid He bath, needed to cool the superconducting cavity. The observed response of an OST is a complex, but reproducible pattern of oscillations. A small helium evaporation cryostat was built which allows the investigation of the response of an OST in greater detail. The distance between a point-like electrical heater and the OST can be varied. The OST can be mounted either parallel or perpendicular to the plate, housing the heat source. If the artificial quench-point releases an amount of energy compatible to a real quench spot on a cavity's surface, the OST signal starts with a negative pulse, which is usually strong enough to allow automatic detection. Furthermore, the reflection of the Second Sound on the wall is observed. A reflection coefficient R = 0.39 +- 0.05 of the glass wall is measured. This excludes a strong influence of multiple reflections in the complex OST response. Fourier analyses show three main frequencies, found in all OST spectra. They can be interpreted as modes of an oscillating circular membrane.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure

Conceptual design of a nonscaling fixed field alternating gradient accelerator for protons and carbon ions for charged particle therapy

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.The conceptual design for a nonscaling fixed field alternating gradient accelerator suitable for charged particle therapy (the use of protons and other light ions to treat some forms of cancer) is described.EPSR

Superconducting RF Technology R&D for Future Accelerator Applications

Superconducting rf technology (SRF) is evolving rapidly as are its applications. While there is active exploitation of what one may term the current state-of-the-practice, there is also rapid progress expanding in several dimensions the accessible and useful parameter space. While state-of-the-art performance sometimes outpaces thorough understanding, the improving scientific understanding from active SRF research is clarifying routes to obtain optimum performance from present materials and opening avenues beyond the standard bulk niobium. The improving technical basis understanding is enabling process engineering to both improve performance confidence and reliability and also unit implementation costs. Increasing confidence in the technology enables the engineering of new creative application designs. We attempt to survey this landscape to highlight the potential for future accelerator applications.Comment: Submitted to Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technolog

Investigation of Propagation Characteristics of Twisted Hollow Waveguides for Particle Accelerator Applications

A new class of accelerating structures employing a uniformly twisted waveguide is investigated. Twisted waveguides of various cross-sectional geometries are considered and analyzed. It is shown that such a twisted waveguide can support waves that travel at a speed slower than the speed of light c. The slow-wave properties of twisted structures are of interest because these slow-wave electromagnetic fields can be used in applications such as electron traveling wave tubes and linear particle accelerators. Since there is no exact closed form solution for the electromagnetic fields within a twisted waveguide or cavity, several previously proposed approximate methods are examined, and more efficient approaches are developed. It is found that the existing perturbation theory methods yield adequate results for slowly twisted structures; however, our efforts here are geared toward analyzing rapidly twisted structures using modified finite difference methods specially suited for twisted structures. Although the method can handle general twisted structures, three particular cross sections are selected as representative cases for careful analysis. First, a slowly twisted rectangular cavity is analyzed as a reference case. This is because its shape is simple and perturbation theory already gives a good approximate solution for such slow twists rates. Secondly, a symmetrically notched circular cross section is investigated, since its longitudinal cross section is comparable to the well known disk-loaded cavity (used in many practical accelerator designs, including SLAC). Finally, a dumbbell shaped cross section is analyzed because of its similarity to the well-known TESLA-type accelerating cavity, which is of great importance because of its wide acceptance as a superconducting cavity. To validate the results of the developed theory and our extensive simulations, the newly developed numerical models are compared to commercial codes. Also, several prototypes are developed employing the three basic shapes discussed previously. Bench measurements are performed on the prototype cavities to evaluate dispersion by measuring the field distribution along these cavities. The measurement results are compared to the simulations and theoretical results, and good agreement is shown. Once validated, the developed models are used to design twisted accelerating structures with specific phase velocities and good accelerating performance

Electron Sources for Future Lightsources, Summary and Conclusions for the Activities during FLS 2012

This paper summarizes the discussions, presentations, and activity of the Future Light Sources Workshop 2012 (FLS 2012) working group dedicated to Electron Sources. The focus of the working group was to discuss concepts and technologies that might enable much higher peak and average brightness from electron beam sources. Furthermore the working group was asked to consider methods to greatly improve the robustness of operation and lower the costs of providing electrons.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, summary paper from working group Future Light Sources 2012 Workshop at Newport News, Virginia, USA (http://www.jlab.org/conferences/FLS2012/