Development of Vacuum Chambers in Low Z Material

Highly transparent vacuum chambers are increasingly required in high energy particle physics. In particular, vacuum chambers in the experiments should be as transparent as possible to minimize the background to the detectors, whilst also reducing the material activation. Beryllium is, so far, the most performant material for this application, but it presents some drawbacks such as brittleness, manufacturing issues, toxic if broken, high cost and low availability. A development work to obtain an alternative material to beryllium with similar performance is being carried out at CERN. Three categories have been defined and considered: raw bulk material, material composites and structural composites. The main functional requirements are: vacuum compatibility (leak tightness, low outgassing rate), temperature resistance (in the range 200-230 °C), transparency, and mechanical stiffness and strength. After beryllium, carbon is the element with the lowest atomic number that is practical for this application; therefore carbon based materials have been considered in a variety of options. In this paper, several technologies are presented and discussed. Results of preliminary tests on samples are also shown

Chapter 12: Vacuum System

Chapter 12 in High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) : Preliminary Design Report. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the largest scientific instruments ever built. Since opening up a new energy frontier for exploration in 2010, it has gathered a global user community of about 7,000 scientists working in fundamental particle physics and the physics of hadronic matter at extreme temperature and density. To sustain and extend its discovery potential, the LHC will need a major upgrade in the 2020s. This will increase its luminosity (rate of collisions) by a factor of five beyond the original design value and the integrated luminosity (total collisions created) by a factor ten. The LHC is already a highly complex and exquisitely optimised machine so this upgrade must be carefully conceived and will require about ten years to implement. The new configuration, known as High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will rely on a number of key innovations that push accelerator technology beyond its present limits. Among these are cutting-edge 11-12 tesla superconducting magnets, compact superconducting cavities for beam rotation with ultra-precise phase control, new technology and physical processes for beam collimation and 300 metre-long high-power superconducting links with negligible energy dissipation. The present document describes the technologies and components that will be used to realise the project and is intended to serve as the basis for the detailed engineering design of HL-LHC

LHC Vacuum Upgrade during LS1

The last two years of LHC operation have highlighted concerns on the levels of the dynamic vacuum in the long straight sections in presence of high intensity beams. The analysis of the existing data has shown relationship between pressures spikes and beam screen temperature oscillations or micro-sparking in the RF fingers of the bellows on one side and coincidence of pressure bumps with stimulated desorption by electron cloud, beam losses and/or thermal out gassing stimulated by higher order modes (HOM) losses. The electron cloud mitigation solutions will be adapted to the different configurations: cold/warm transitions, non-coated surfaces in direct view of beams, photoelectrons, etc. All scenarios will be presented together with their efficiencies. Additional pumping and reengineering of components will reduce the sensitivity of the vacuum system to beam losses or HOM inducing out gassing. The expected margin at nominal intensity and energy resulting from these consolidations will be summarized. Finally, the challenges of the Experimental areas will be addressed, more specifically the status of the new Beryllium pipes (ATLAS and CMS) which are in the critical path and the consolidation of vacuum instrumentation, pumping and electron cloud mitigation. The risk corresponding to the proposed consolidations will be shown and the margins with respect to the schedule analyzed

Development of Aluminium Vacuum Chambers for the LHC Experiments at CERN

Beam losses may cause activation of vacuum chamber walls, in particular those of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. For the High Luminosity (HL-LHC), the activation of such vacuum chambers will increase. It is therefore necessary to use a vacuum chamber material which interacts less with the circulating beam. While beryllium is reserved for the collision point, a good compromise between cost, availability and transparency is obtained with aluminium alloys; such materials are a preferred choice with respect to austenitic stainless steel. Manufacturing a thin-wall aluminium vacuum chamber presents several challenges as the material grade needs to be machinable, weldable, leak-tight for small thicknesses, and able to withstand heating to 250°C for extended periods of time. This paper presents some of the technical challenges during the manufacture of these vacuum chambers and the methods for overcoming production difficulties, including surface treatments and Non-Evaporable Getter (NEG) thin-film coating

LHC Detector Vacuum System Consolidation for Long Shutdown 1 (LS1) in 2013-2014

The LHC has ventured into unchartered territory for Particle Physics accelerators. A dedicated consolidation program is required between 2013 and 2014 to ensure optimal physics performance. The experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb, will utilise this shutdown, along with the gained experience of three years of physics running, to make optimisations to their detectors. New vacuum technologies have been developed for the experimental areas, to be integrated during this first phase shutdown. These technologies include bellows, vacuum chambers and ion pumps in aluminium, new beryllium vacuum chambers, and composite mechanical supports. An overview of this first phase consolidation program for the LHC experiments is presented

Specification of new Vacuum Chambers for the LHC Experimental Interactions

The apertures for the vacuum chambers at the interaction points inside the LHC experiments are key both to the safe operation of the LHC machine and to obtaining the best physics performance from the experiments. Following the successful start-up of the LHC physics programme the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS experiments have launched projects to improve physics performance by adding detector layers closer to the beam. To achieve this they have requested smaller aperture vacuum chambers to be installed. The first periods of LHC operation have yielded much information both on the performance of the LHC and the stability and alignment of the experiments. In this paper, the new information relating to the aperture of these chambers is presented and a summary is made of analysis of parameters required to safely reduce the vacuum chambers apertures for the high-luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS

Lessons Learnt and Mitigation Measures for the CERN LHC Equipment with RF fingers

Beam-induced RF heating has been observed in several LHC components when the bunch/beam intensity was increased and/or the bunch length reduced. In particular eight bellows, out of the ten double-bellow modules present in the machine in 2011, were found with the spring, which should keep the RF fingers in good electrical contact with the central insert, broken. Following these observations, the designs of all the components of the LHC equipped with RF fingers have been reviewed. The lessons learnt and mitigation measures are presented in this paper

First Result from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station: Precision Measurement of the Positron Fraction in Primary Cosmic Rays of 0.5–350 GeV

A precision measurement by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station of the positron fraction in primary cosmic rays in the energy range from 0.5 to 350 GeV based on 6.8×10[superscript 6] positron and electron events is presented. The very accurate data show that the positron fraction is steadily increasing from 10 to ∼250  GeV, but, from 20 to 250 GeV, the slope decreases by an order of magnitude. The positron fraction spectrum shows no fine structure, and the positron to electron ratio shows no observable anisotropy. Together, these features show the existence of new physical phenomena.United States. Dept. of Energ