Magnetic Field Penetration Technique to Study Field Shielding of Multilayered Superconductors

The SIS structure which consists of alternative thin layers of superconductors and insulators on a bulk niobium has been proposed to shield niobium cavity surface from high magnetic field and hence increase the accelerating gradient. The study of the behavior of multilayer superconductors in an external magnetic field is essential to optimize their SRF performance. In this work we report the development of a simple and efficient technique to measure penetration of magnetic field into bulk, thin film and multilayer superconductors. Experimental setup contains a small superconducting solenoid which can produce a parallel surface magnetic field up to 0.5 T and Hall probes to detect penetrated magnetic field across the superconduct- ing sample. This system was calibrated and used to study the effect of niobium sample thickness on the field of full magnetic flux penetration. We determined the optimum thickness of the niobium substrate to fabricate the multi-layer structure for the measurements in our setup. This technique was used to measure penetration fields of Nb3Sn thin films and Nb3Sn/Al2O3 multilayers deposited on Al2O3 wafers. The system was optimized to mitigate thermo- magnetic flux jumps at low temperatures

Surface Properties and RF Performance of Vapor Diffused Nb₃Sn On NB After Sequential Anneals Below 1000 °C

Nb₃Sn is a next-generation superconducting material that can be used for future superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) accelerator cavities, promising better performance, cost reduction, and higher operating temperature than Nb. The Sn vapor diffusion method is currently the most preferred and successful technique to coat niobium cavities with Nb₃Sn. Among post-coating treatments to optimize the coating quality, higher temperature annealing without Sn is known to degrade Nb₃Sn because of Sn loss. We have investigated Nb₃Sn/Nb samples briefly annealed at 800-1000 °C, for 10 and 20 minutes to potentially improve the surface to enhance the performance of Nb₃Sn-coated cavities. Following the sample studies, a coated single-cell cavity was sequentially annealed at 900 °C and tested its performance each time, improving the cavity’s quality factor relatively. This paper summarizes the sample studies and discusses the RF test results from sequentially annealed SRF Nb₃Sn/Nb cavity

Preliminary Results From Magnetic Field Scanning System for a Single-Cell Niobium Cavity

One of the building blocks of modern particle accelerators is superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities. Niobium is the material of choice to build such cavities, which operate at liquid helium temperature (2 - 4 K) and have some of the highest quality factors found in Nature. There are several sources of residual losses, one of them is trapped magnetic flux, which limits the quality factor in SRF cavities. The flux trapping mechanism depends on different niobium surface preparations and cool-down conditions. Suitable diagnostic tools are not yet available to study the effects of such conditions on magnetic flux trapping. A magnetic field scanning system (MFSS) for SRF cavities using Hall probes and Fluxgate magnetometer has been designed, built, and is commissioned to measure the local magnetic field trapped in 1.3 GHz single-cell SRF cavities at 4 K. In this contribution, we will present the preliminary results from MFSS for a single cell niobium cavity

Magnetic Field Mapping of a Large-Grain 1.3 GHz Single-Cell Cavity

A new magnetic field mapping system for 1.3 GHz single-cell cavities was developed in order to reveal the impact of ambient magnetic field and temperature gradients during cool-down on the flux trapping phenomenon. Measurements were done at 2 K for different cool-down conditions of a large-grain cavity before and after 120 °C bake. The fraction of applied magnetic field trapped in the cavity walls was ~ 50% after slow cool-down and ~ 20% after fast cool-down. The results showed a weak correlation between between trapped flux locations and hot-spots causing the high-field Q-slope. The results also showed an increase of the trapped flux at the quench location, after quenching, and a local redistribution of trapped flux with increasing RF field

EIC 197 MHz Crab Cavity RF Optimization

Crab cavities, operating at 197 MHz and 394 MHz respectively, will be used to compensate the loss of luminosity due to a 25 mrad crossing angle at the interaction point in the Electron Ion Collider (EIC). Both crab cavities are of the RF Dipole (RFD) shape. To meet the machine design requirements, there are a few important cavity design considerations that need to be addressed. First, to achieve stable cavity operation at the design voltages, cavity geometry details must be optimized to suppress potential multipacting. Incorporating strong HOM damping in the cavity design is required for the beam stability and quality. Furthermore, due to the finite pole width, the multipole fields, especially the sextupole and the decapole terms, need to be minimized to maintain an acceptable beam dynamic aperture. This paper will present the RF optimization details of the 197 MHz cavity

Nb\u3csub\u3e3\u3c/sub\u3eSn Coating of Twin Axis Cavity for SRF Applications

The twin axis cavity with two identical accelerating beams has been proposed for energy recovery linac (ERL) applications. Nb3Sn is a superconducting material with a higher critical temperature and a higher critical field as compared to Nb, which promises a lower operating cost due to higher quality factors. Two niobium twin axis cavities were fabricated at JLab and were proposed to be coated with Nb3Sn. Due to their more complex geometry, the typical coating process used for basic elliptical cavi-ties needs to be improved to coat these cavities. This development advances the current coating system at JLab for coating complex cavities. Two twin axis cavities were coated recently for the first time. This contribution dis-cusses initial results from coating of twin axis cavities, RF testing and witness sample analysis with an overview of the current challenges towards high performance Nb3Sn coated twin axis cavities

Investigation of the Multilayer Shielding Effect Through NBTin-AIN Coated Bulk Niobium

We report measurements of the dc field onset Bp of magnetic flux penetration through NbTiN-AlN coating on bulk niobium using the Hall probe experimental setup. The measurements of Bp reveal the multilayer shielding effect on bulk niobium under high magnetic fields at cryogenic temperatures. We observed a significant enhancement in Bp for the NbTiN-AlN coated Nb samples as compared to bare Nb samples. The observed dependence of Bp on the coating thickness is consistent with theoretical predictions

Predicting Target DNA Sequences of DNA-Binding Proteins Based on Unbound Structures

DNA-binding proteins such as transcription factors use DNA-binding domains (DBDs) to bind to specific sequences in the genome to initiate many important biological functions. Accurate prediction of such target sequences, often represented by position weight matrices (PWMs), is an important step to understand many biological processes. Recent studies have shown that knowledge-based potential functions can be applied on protein-DNA co-crystallized structures to generate PWMs that are considerably consistent with experimental data. However, this success has not been extended to DNA-binding proteins lacking co-crystallized structures. This study aims at investigating the possibility of predicting the DNA sequences bound by DNA-binding proteins from the proteins' unbound structures (structures of the unbound state). Given an unbound query protein and a template complex, the proposed method first employs structure alignment to generate synthetic protein-DNA complexes for the query protein. Once a complex is available, an atomic-level knowledge-based potential function is employed to predict PWMs characterizing the sequences to which the query protein can bind. The evaluation of the proposed method is based on seven DNA-binding proteins, which have structures of both DNA-bound and unbound forms for prediction as well as annotated PWMs for validation. Since this work is the first attempt to predict target sequences of DNA-binding proteins from their unbound structures, three types of structural variations that presumably influence the prediction accuracy were examined and discussed. Based on the analyses conducted in this study, the conformational change of proteins upon binding DNA was shown to be the key factor. This study sheds light on the challenge of predicting the target DNA sequences of a protein lacking co-crystallized structures, which encourages more efforts on the structure alignment-based approaches in addition to docking- and homology modeling-based approaches for generating synthetic complexes

Role of Novelty Seeking Personality Traits as Mediator of the Association between COMT and Onset Age of Drug Use in Chinese Heroin Dependent Patients

Personality traits such as novelty seeking (NS) are associated with substance dependence but the mechanism underlying this association remains uncertain. Previous studies have focused on the role of the dopamine pathway.Examine the relationships between allelic variants of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, NS personality traits, and age of onset of drug use in heroin-dependent subjects in China.The 478 heroin dependent subjects from four drug rehabilitation centers in Shanghai who were genotyped for eight tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) on the COMT gene completed the NS subscale from the Temperament and Character Inventory. Multivariate analyses were used to assess the potential mediating role of NS personality traits in the association between COMT gene variants and the age of onset of heroin use.In the univariate analysis the COMT rs737866 gene variants were independently associated with both NS and age of onset of drug use: those with the TT genotype had higher NS subscale scores and an earlier onset age of heroin use than individuals with CT or CC genotypes. In the multivariate analysis the inclusion of the NS subscore variable weakened the relationship between the COMT rs737866 TT genotype and an earlier age of onset of drug use. Our findings that COMT is associated with both NS personality traits and with the age of onset of heroin use helps to clarify the complex relationship between genetic and psychological factors in the development of substance abuse