Preparation and characterization of 33-S samples for 33-S(n,alpha)30-Si cross-section measurements at the n_TOF facility at CERN

Thin 33S samples for the study of the 33S(n,a)30Si cross-section at the n_TOF facility at CERN were made by thermal evaporation of 33S powder onto a dedicated substrate made of kapton covered with thin layers of copper, chromium and titanium. This method has provided for the first time bare sulfur samples a few centimeters in diameter. The samples have shown an excellent adherence with no mass loss after few years and no sublimation in vacuum at room temperature. The determination of the mass thickness of 33S has been performed by means of Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. The samples have been successfully tested under neutron irradiation.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España-FPA2013-47327- C2-1-R, FPA2014-53290-C2-2-P, FPA2016-77689-C2-1-RJunta de Andalucía-P11-FQM-8229Ministerio de Economía y Empresa de España (Fondos FEDER)-FIS2015-69941-C2-1-PAECC (Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer)-PS16163811POR

Amorphous Carbon Coating in SPS

Within the LHC Injector Upgrade (LIU) project, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) needs to be upgraded to inject into the LHC higher intensity and brighter 25-ns bunch spaced beams. To mitigate the Electron Multipacting (E.M.) phenomenon, a well-known limiting factor for high-intensity positively charged beams, CERN developed carbon coatings with a low Secondary Electron Yield (SEY). During the 2016 & 2017 year-end technical stops, such coatings were deposited on the inner wall of the vacuum chambers of some SPS quadrupole and dipole magnets by a dedicated in-situ setup. A much larger scale deployment was implemented during the Long Shutdown 2 (2019-2020) to coat all beam pipes of focussing quadrupoles (QF) and their adjacent short straight sections. In this contribution, we remind the motivation of the project, and present the results and the quality control of the carbon coating campaign during the latter phase of implementation

Detailed Electromagnetic Characterisation of HL-LHC Low Impedance Collimators

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project will upgrade the LHC machine to allow operation with increased luminosity for the experiments. In order to achieve this goal, different operational parameters of the machine need to be pushed beyond the present design values, including the stored beam energy. One of the main challenges related to the achievement of the upgraded performance is the beam collimation system and its contribution to the overall machine impedance budget. In this perspective, new low impedance collimators have been designed, fabricated, and installed in the LHC. In this study, we will present their detailed electromagnetic (EM) characterization by means of radio frequency (RF) measurements and EM simulations