Everything has a limit—superconducting cavities are no exception. Physicists put voltage in their superconducting cavities to boost the energy of particles. But it’s possible to ask for too much from a cavity. When this happens, the cavity fails: the superconducting material becomes normal conducting, the voltage collapses and the energy escapes. This is called a […]
Cavities at your fingertips
Q – cavity quality factor
Physicists need to understand each accelerator cavity individually before assembling a collider. One of the cavity characteristics physicists measure is called the cavity quality factor, Q factor for short. One way to understand the Q factor is to pick up a bell. Let the clapper tap the bell edge once. You’ll notice that just one […]
Cavities in the spotlight
The secret life of cavities – not so secret any more
Science photographer Heiner Müller-Elsner follows a cavity through all stages of production
Cavities will be the heartbeat of the ILC, accelerating electrons and positrons to very high energies so that they can collide in the centre of the detectors. The ILC’s core technology, superconducting radiofrequency technology or SCRF, is also used in other accelerators, for example FLASH at DESY of the future European XFEL. Because they are […]
A cavity made in KEK’s Cavity Fabrication Facility
To realise the International Linear Collider, scientists need to address many issues. One of the most important is the primary cost driver for the ILC, the superconducting radiofrequency (SCRF) cavity and cryomodule systems. At KEK, the team responsible for SCRF activity intends to seek cost-effective mass-production scenarios for the SCRF cavity. The ILC will have […]
Seeing beneath the surface
X-ray tomography gives subsurface view of accelerator cavities
The power of the CAT scan to find tumours or bone fractures has advanced medical science by bringing such ailments to X-ray light, foregoing the need to cut a body open for diagnosis. As particle accelerator research makes its own advances, scientists are exploiting the X-ray in similar ways. Researchers at the US Department of […]
Global Design Effort optimises industralisation models
This week's issue features a Director's Corner from Akira Yamamoto, Project Manager for the Global Design Effort.
As part of Technical Design Phase 2, the Global Design Effort (GDE) has been working towards more realistic and cost-effective industrialisation models for the production of superconducting radiofrequency (SCRF) cavities and cryomodules, as these are primary cost drivers in the ILC construction estimate. The most important issue to be explored is how to distribute and […]
A conformal approach to cavity coating
Argonne scientists give metals a healthy superconducting coat, one atomic layer at a time.
A necklace of cheap metal with gold-flaked paint may look like solid gold finery, but eventually, the paint will peel, revealing a worthless trinket beneath. But an accelerator cavity of inexpensive metal with a nice niobium coat, though less expensive than a solid niobium structure, could actually hold more value for a particle collider. Scientists […]
The sound of accelerator cavities
Liquid helium’s curious properties help scientists focus on cavity defects.
Heat waves aren’t always a bad thing. For scientists working on accelerator cavities, they provide a simple way to locate hard-to-see surface defects, which can turn an otherwise superconducting cavity into a dud. Cornell University’s second-sound detection system homes in on a cavity defect, such as a pit hiding in the cavity wall, by tracking […]