No Arabic abstract
Buffered Chemical Polishing (BCP) was the most conventional polishing method for superconducting radio frequency (SRF) Niobium (Nb) cavity surface preparation before the discovery of Electropolishing (EP), which is superior to BCP in high gradient performance. The High Field Q-slope (HFQS) is perfectly eliminated by taking the low temperature bake (LTB) post EP, which guarantees high gradient performance in EPed cavities. The mechanism of the HFQS is well understood for EPed cavities. On the other hand, there is no common consensus on the HFQS with BCP, since even BCP with LTB does not always resolve the HFQS. BCP is much easier to apply and still an important preparation technology for very complicated SRF structures like low beta cavities. Therefore, overcoming the issue of HFQS with BCP is highly beneficial to the SRF community. This paper mines a large number of available data sets on BCPed cavity performance with fine grain, large grain, and even single crystal niobium materials under different experimental settings. We found that all existing explanations for HFQS with BCP are inconsistent with some experimental results, and propounded nitrogen contamination as a new model. We checked that nitrogen contamination agrees with all existing data and nicely explains unresolved phenomena. Combining these evidence, we deduce that nitrogen contamination is the cause of HFQS in BCP.
In this study, we present new insights on the origin of the high-field Q-slope in superconducting radio-frequency cavities. Consequent hydrofluoric acid rinses are used to probe the radio-frequency performance as a function of the material removal of two superconducting bulk niobium cavities prepared with low temperature nitrogen infusion. The study reveals that nitrogen infusion affects only the first few tens of nanometers below the native oxide layer. The typical high-field Q-slope behavior of electropolished cavities is indeed completely recovered after a dozen hydrofluoric acid rinses. The reappearance of the high-field Q-slope as a function of material removal was modeled by means of Londons local description of screening currents in the superconductor, returning good fitting of the experimental data and suggesting that interstitial impurities layers with diffusion length of the order to tens of nanometers can mitigate high-field Q-slope.
In this letter, we present the frequency dependence of the vortex surface resistance of bulk niobium accelerating cavities as a function of different state-of-the-art surface treatments. Higher flux surface resistance per amount of trapped magnetic field - sensitivity - is observed for higher frequencies, in agreement with our theoretical model. Higher sensitivity is observed for N-doped cavities, which possess an intermediate value of electron mean-free-path, compared to 120 C and EP/BCP cavities. Experimental results from our study showed that the sensitivity has a non-monotonic trend as a function of the mean-free-path, including at frequencies other than 1.3 GHz, and that the vortex response to the rf field can be tuned from the pinning regime to flux-flow regime by manipulating the frequency and/or the mean-free-path of the resonator, as reported in our previous studies. The frequency dependence of the trapped flux sensitivity to the amplitude of the accelerating gradient is also highlighted.
Recent developments in superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) research have focused primarily on high frequency elliptical cavities for electron accelerators. Advances have been made in both reducing RF surface resistance and pushing the readily achievable accelerating gradient by using novel SRF cavity treatments including surface processing, custom heat treatments, and flux expulsion. Despite the global demand for SRF based hadron accelerators, the advancement of TEM mode cavities has lagged behind. To address this, two purpose-built research cavities, one quarter-wave and one half-wave resonator, have been designed and built to allow characterization of TEM-mode cavities with standard and novel surface treatments. The cavities are intended as the TEM mode equivalent to the 1.3GHz single cell cavity, which is the essential tool for high frequency cavity research. Given their coaxial structure, the cavities allow testing at the fundamental mode and higher harmonics, giving unique insight into the role of RF frequency on fundamental loss mechanisms from intrinsic and extrinsic sources. In this paper, the cavities and testing infrastructure are described and the first performance measurements of both cavities are presented.
We investigate the effect of high temperature treatments followed by only high-pressure water rinse (HPR) of superconducting radio frequency (SRF) niobium cavities. The objective is to provide a cost effective alternative to the typical cavity processing sequence, by eliminating the material removal step post furnace treatment while preserving or improving the RF performance. The studies have been conducted in the temperature range 800-1000C for different conditions of the starting substrate: large grain and fine grain, electro-polished (EP) and centrifugal barrel polished (CBP) to mirror finish. An interesting effect of the grain size on the performances is found. Cavity results and samples characterization show that furnace contaminants cause poor cavity performance, and a practical solution is found to prevent surface contamination. Extraordinary values of residual resistances ~ 1 nOhm and below are then consistently achieved for the contamination-free cavities. These results lead to a more cost-effective processing and improved RF performance, and, in conjunction with CBP, open a potential pathway to acid-free processing.
The surface resistance of an RF superconductor depends on the surface temperature, the residual resistance and various superconductor parameters, e.g. the energy gap, and the electron mean free path. These parameters can be determined by measuring the quality factor Q0 of a SRF cavity in helium-baths of different temperatures. The surface resistance can be computed from Q0 for any cavity geometry, but it is not trivial to determine the temperature of the surface when only the temperature of the helium bath is known. Traditionally, it was approximated that the surface temperature on the inner surface of the cavity was the same as the temperature of the helium bath. This is a good approximation at small RF-fields on the surface, but to determine the field dependence of Rs, one cannot be restricted to small field losses. Here we show the following: (1) How computer simulations can be used to determine the inside temperature Tin so that Rs(Tin) can then be used to extract the superconducting parameters. The computer code combines the well-known programs, the HEAT code and the SRIMP code. (2) How large an error is created when assuming the surface temperature is same as the temperature of the helium bath? It turns out that this error is at least 10% at high RF-fields in typical cases.