New local field quantity describing the high gradient limit of accelerating structures

A new local field quantity is presented which gives the high gradient performance limit of accelerating structures due to vacuum rf breakdown. The new field quantity, a modified Poynting vector S_{c}, is derived from a model of the breakdown trigger in which field emission currents from potential breakdown sites cause local pulsed heating. The field quantity S_{c} takes into account both active and reactive power flow on the structure surface. This new quantity has been evaluated for many X-band and 30 GHz rf tests, both traveling wave and standing wave, and the value of S_{c} achieved in the experiments agrees well with analytical estimates

Carbon coating of the SPS dipole chambers

The Electron Multipacting (EM) phenomenon is a limiting factor for the achievement of high luminosity in accelerators for positively charged particles and for the performance of RF devices. At CERN, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) must be upgraded in order to feed the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with 25 ns bunch spaced beams. At such small bunch spacing, EM may limit the performance of the SPS and consequently that of the LHC. To mitigate this phenomenon CERN is developing a carbon thin film coating with low Secondary Electron Yield (SEY) to coat the internal walls of the SPS dipoles beam pipes. This paper presents the progresses in the coating technology, the performance of the carbon coatings and the strategy for a large scale production.Comment: 7 pages, contribution to the Joint INFN-CERN-EuCARD-AccNet Workshop on Electron-Cloud Effects: ECLOUD'12; 5-9 Jun 2012, La Biodola, Isola d'Elba, Italy; CERN Yellow Report CERN-2013-002, pp.141-14

Status of the Fatigue Studies on the CLIC Accelerating Structures

The need for high accelerating gradients for the future multi-TeV e+e- Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) imposes considerable constraints on the materials of the accelerating structures. The surfaces exposed to high pulsed RF (Radio Frequency) currents are subject to cyclic thermal stresses which are expected to induce surface break up by fatigue. Since no fatigue data exists in the literature up to very large numbers of cycles and for the particular stress pattern present in RF cavities, a comprehensive study of copper alloys in this parameter range has been initiated. Fatigue data for selected copper alloys in different states are presente

High Power RF Induced Thermal Fatigue in the High Gradient CLIC Accelerating Structures

The need for high accelerating gradients for the CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) imposes considerable constraints on the materials of the accelerating structures. The surfaces exposed to high pulsed RF (Radio Frequency) currents are subjected to cyclic thermal stresses possibly resulting in surface break up by fatigue. Various high strength alloys from the group of high conductivity copper alloys have been selected and have been tested in different states, with different surface treatments and in different stress ratios. Low to medium cycle fatigue data (up to 108 cycles) of fully compressive surface thermal stresses has been collected by means of a pulsed laser surface heating apparatus. The surface damage has been characterized by SEM observations and roughness measurements. High cycle fatigue data, up to 7x1010 cycles, of varying stress ratio has been collected in high frequency bulk fatigue tests using an ultrasonic apparatus. Up-to-date results from these experiments are presented

A Unified Surface Geometric Framework for Feature-Aware Denoising, Hole Filling and Context-Aware Completion

Technologies for 3D data acquisition and 3D printing have enormously developed in the past few years, and, consequently, the demand for 3D virtual twins of the original scanned objects has increased. In this context, feature-aware denoising, hole filling and context-aware completion are three essential (but far from trivial) tasks. In this work, they are integrated within a geometric framework and realized through a unified variational model aiming at recovering triangulated surfaces from scanned, damaged and possibly incomplete noisy observations. The underlying non-convex optimization problem incorporates two regularisation terms: a discrete approximation of the Willmore energy forcing local sphericity and suited for the recovery of rounded features, and an approximation of the l(0) pseudo-norm penalty favouring sparsity in the normal variation. The proposed numerical method solving the model is parameterization-free, avoids expensive implicit volumebased computations and based on the efficient use of the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. Experiments show how the proposed framework can provide a robust and elegant solution suited for accurate restorations even in the presence of severe random noise and large damaged areas

Anisotropic osmosis filtering for shadow removal in images

We present an anisotropic extension of the isotropic osmosis model that has been introduced by Weickert et al.~(Weickert, 2013) for visual computing applications, and we adapt it specifically to shadow removal applications. We show that in the integrable setting, linear anisotropic osmosis minimises an energy that involves a suitable quadratic form which models local directional structures. In our shadow removal applications we estimate the local structure via a modified tensor voting approach (Moreno, 2012) and use this information within an anisotropic diffusion inpainting that resembles edge-enhancing anisotropic diffusion inpainting (Weickert, 2006, Gali\'c, 2008). Our numerical scheme combines the nonnegativity preserving stencil of Fehrenbach and Mirebeau (Fehrenbach, 2014) with an exact time stepping based on highly accurate polynomial approximations of the matrix exponential. The resulting anisotropic model is tested on several synthetic and natural images corrupted by constant shadows. We show that it outperforms isotropic osmosis, since it does not suffer from blurring artefacts at the shadow boundaries

Advanced Experimental Techniques for RF and DC Breakdown Research

Advanced experimental techniques are being developed to analyze RF and DC breakdown events. First measurements with a specially built spectrometer have been made with a DC spark setup [1] at CERN and will soon be installed in the CLIC 30GHz accelerating structure test stand to allow comparison between DC and RF breakdown phenomena. This spectrometer is able to measure the light intensity development during a breakdown in narrow wavelength bands in the visible and near infrared range. This will give information about the important aspects of the breakdown including chemical elements, temperature, plasma parameters and possibly precursors of a breakdown

Material Selection and Characterization for High Gradient RF Applications

The selection of candidate materials for the accelerating cavities of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is carried out in parallel with high power RF testing. The maximum DC breakdown field of copper, copper alloys, refractory metals, aluminium and titanium have been measured with a dedicated setup. Higher maximum fields are obtained for refractory metals and for titanium, which exhibits, however, important damages after conditioning. Fatigue behaviour of copper alloys has been studied for surface and bulk by pulsed laser irradiation and ultrasonic excitation, respectively. The selected copper alloys show consistently higher fatigue resistance than copper in both experiments. In order to obtain the best local properties in the device a possible solution is a bi-metallic assembly. Junctions of molybdenum and copper-zirconium UNS C15000 alloy, achieved by HIP (Hot Isostatic Pressing) diffusion bonding or explosion bonding were evaluated for their mechanical strength. The reliability of the results obtained with both techniques should be improved. Testing in DC and radiofrequency (RF) is continued in order to select materials for a bi-metal exhibiting superior properties with respect to the combination C15000-Mo

The Tuning System for the HIE-ISOLDE High-Beta Quarter Wave Resonator

A new linac using superconducting quarter-wave resonators (QWR) is under construction at CERN in the framework of the HIE-ISOLDE project. The QWRs are made of niobium sputtered on a bulk copper substrate. The working frequency at 4.5 K is 101.28 MHz and they will provide 6 MV/m accelerating gradient on the beam axis with a total maximum power dissipation of 10 W on cavity walls. A tuning system is required in order to both minimize the forward power variation in beam operation and to compensate the unavoidable uncertainties in the frequency shift during the cool-down process. The tuning system has to fulfil a complex combination of RF, structural and thermal requirements. The paper presents the functional specifications and details the tuning system RF and mechanical design and simulations. The results of the tests performed on a prototype system are discussed and the industrialization strategy is presented in view of final production.Comment: 5 pages, The 16th International Conference on RF Superconductivity (SRF2013), Paris, France, Sep 23-27, 201

Role of surface microgeometries on electron escape probability and secondary electron yield of metal surfaces

The influence of microgeometries on the Secondary Electron Yield (SEY) of surfaces is investigated. Laser written structures of different aspect ratio (height to width) on a copper surface tuned the SEY of the surface and reduced its value to less than unity. The aspect ratio of microstructures was methodically controlled by varying the laser parameters. The results obtained corroborate a recent theoretical model of SEY reduction as a function of the aspect ratio of microstructures. Nanostructures - which are formed inside the microstructures during the interaction with the laser beam - provided further reduction in SEY comparable to that obtained in the simulation of structures which were coated with an absorptive layer suppressing secondary electron emission