Conditioning of the First Mass Production Power Couplers for the ESS Elliptical Cavities

International audienceIn the framework of the European Spallation Source (ESS), CEA Paris-Saclay is in charge of the delivery of 9 medium beta (β = 0.67) and 21 high beta (β = 0.86) cryomodules. Each cryomodule is composed of 4 cavities equipped with RF (Radio Frequency) power couplers (704.42 MHz, 1.1 MW maximum peak power, repetition rate=14 Hz, RF pulse width > 3.1 ms). Ten prototype power couplers have been manufactured to validate the design and the performance. Currently the mass production of the 120 couplers started and the six first pre-series medium beta couplers have been successfully conditioned. The achievement of this milestone allowed us to launch the production of the remaining 30 medium beta couplers. This paper presents the conditioning of the pre-series couplers

Status of the High Power Couplers for ESS Elliptical Cavities

International audienceIn the framework of the European Spallation Source (ESS), CEA Paris-Saclay is responsible for the delivery of 30 cryomodules (9 medium beta (β = 0.67) and 21 high beta (β = 0.86) ones). Each cryomodule contains 4 elliptical cavities equipped with a radio frequency power coupler. The ESS nominal pulse is 1.1 MW maximum peak power over a width of 3.6 ms at a repetition rate of 14 Hz. The design of the couplers for medium beta and for high beta cavities is the same, except a small difference of the antenna penetration to adjust the Q_{ext}. The mass production of the 120 couplers started and all the medium beta couplers have been conditioned at room temperature. The first cryomodules equipped with the power couplers were successfully tested at high RF power and with cavities at 2K reaching the ESS nominal pulse. The main issue at the start of the series production could be fixed and it was due to bad TiN coatings that caused abnormal dielectric losses in the window. Thus, this paper deals with the TiN coating defect, presents the conditioning procedure and gives a conditioning report of these 36 couplers

ESS RFQ: Construction Status and Power Couplers Qualification

International audienceThe 352 MHz Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) for the European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) will be de-livered during 2019. It is provided by CEA, IRFU, Sac-lay/France. It consists of five sections with a total length of 4.6 m and accelerates the proton beam from 75 keV up to 3.6 MeV. It will be feed with 1.6 MW peak power through two coaxial loop couplers. This paper will present the manufacturing status of the five sections and the qualification test of the RF power couplers

The Saclay Test Stand for Conditioning the ESS RFQ Power Couplers at High RF Power

International audienceThe RF power coupler system for the RFQ of the ESS LINAC will feed 1.6 MW peak power through two coaxial loop couplers for a 352.21 MHz operation at the expected duty cycle. A specific test stand has been designed to condition the power couplers, and test the different auxiliary components in the nominal conditions of the RFQ. The power couplers were successfully assembled, installed and instrumented on the test cavity. This paper presents the general layout of the test stand, the installation and preparation of the power couplers for their conditioning at high RF power up to the ESS nominal conditions

Increase of IPHI Beam Power at CEA Saclay

International audienceFor the first time, in April 2016, the SILHI source produced a proton beam for IPHI RFQ. Due to several technical difficulties on the RFQ water cooling skid, a short RF power pulse (100 μs at the beginning until few hundred microseconds) is injected into the RFQ accelerates the high intensity proton beam up to 3 MeV. The repetition rate is tuned between 1 and 5 Hz. Under these conditions, the beam power after the RFQ is lower than 100 W. At the end of 2017, the 352 MHz RFQ conditioning has been completed (with the same duty cycle) and the proton beam has been accelerated. The increase of the beam power is expected to continue in 2018 in order to reach several kilowatts by the end of the year. In addition, two Ionization beam Profile Monitors (IPM) developed for ESS have been tested on the deviated beam line with a very low duty cycle. The IPHI facility should demonstrate the possibility to produce neutrons with a flexible compact accelerator in the framework of the SONATE project. This paper presents the status of the IPHI project in April 2018

Non-invasive Profilers for the Cold Part of ESS Accelerator

International audienceSeveral Non-invasive Profile Monitors are being in-stalled along the accelerator to support the commissioning, tuning and operation of the powerful proton based ESS linear accelerator. In the low energy parts of the ESS linac (3.6 MeV to 90 MeV), the residual gas pressure is high enough to measure the transverse beam profile by using fluorescence induced by the beam on the gas molecules. However, in the ESS linac sections above 90 MeV, protons are accelerated by superconductive cavities working at cryogenic temperatures and high vacuum. Therefore, the signal based on the fluorescence process is too weak, while ionization can counteract this drawback. We have provided five IPM (Ionization Profile Monitors) pairs for energies ranging from 100 to 600 MeV. The design of such monitors is challenging due to weak signal (as a result of high proton energy and low pressure <10-9 mbar), tight space constraints inside the vacuum chamber, space charge effect, ISO-5 cleanliness requirement, and electrode polarization at ±15 kV. This publication will detail the development we followed to fulfil the ESS requirements

ESS nBLM: Beam Loss Monitors based on Fast Neutron Detection

International audienceA new type of Beam Loss Monitor (BLM) system is being developed for use in the European Spallation Source (ESS) linac, primarily aiming to cover the low energy part (proton energies between 3-100 MeV). In this region of the linac, typical BLM detectors based on charged particle detection (i.e. Ionization Cham-bers) are not appropriate because the expected particle fields will be dominated by neutrons and photons. Another issue is the photon background due to the RF cavities, which is mainly due to field emission from the electrons from the cavity walls, resulting in brems-strahlung photons. The idea for the ESS neutron sensi-tive BLM system (ESS nBLM) is to use Micromegas detectors specially designed to be sensitive to fast neutrons and insensitive to low energy photons (X and gammas). In addition, the detectors must be insensitive to thermal neutrons, because those neutrons may not be directly correlated to beam losses. The appropriate configuration of the Micromegas operating conditions will allow excellent timing, intrinsic photon back-ground suppression and individual neutron counting, extending thus the dynamic range to very low particle fluxes