Radio-frequency superconducting (SRF) cavities are widely used to accelerate a charged particle beam in particle accelerators. The performance of SRF cavities made of bulk niobium has significantly improved over the last ten years and is approaching the theoretical limit for niobium. Nevertheless, RF tests of niobium cavities are still showing some “anomalous” losses that require a better understanding in order to reliably obtain better performance. These losses are characterized by a marked dependence of the surface resistance on the surface electromagnetic field and can be detected by measuring the quality factor of the resonator as a function of the peak surface field. A low-temperature (100–150°C) “in situ” bake under ultrahigh vacuum has been successfully applied as final preparation of niobium RF cavities by several laboratories over the last few years. The benefits reported consist mainly of an improvement of the cavity quality factor at low field and a recovery from “anomalous” losses (so-called “Q drop”) without field emission at higher field. A series of experiments with a CEBAF single-cell cavity have been carried out at Jefferson Lab to carefully investigate the effect of baking at progressively higher temperatures for a fixed time on all the relevant material parameters. Measurements of the cavity quality factor in the temperature range 1.37–280K and resonant frequency shift between 6–9.3K provide information about the surface resistance, energy gap, penetration depth, and mean free path. The experimental data have been analyzed with the complete BCS theory of superconductivity. The hydrogen content of small niobium samples inserted in the cavity during its surface preparation was analyzed with nuclear reaction analysis. The single-cell cavity has been tested at three different temperatures before and after baking to gain some insight on thermal conductivity and Kapitza resistance and the data are compared with different models. This paper describes the results of these experiments and comments on existing models to explain the effect of baking on the performance of niobium RF cavities.
We present detailed experimental and theoretical investigations of hotspots produced by trapped vortex bundles and their effect on the radio-frequency (rf) surface resistance Rs of superconductors at low temperatures. Our measurements of Rs combined with the temperature mapping and laser scanning of a 2.36 mm thick Nb plate incorporated into a 3.3 GHz Nb resonator cavity cooled by the superfluid He at 2 K, revealed spatial scales and temperature distributions of hotspots and showed that they can be moved or split by thermal gradients produced by the scanning laser beam. These results, along with the observed hysteretic field dependence of Rs which can be tuned by the scanning laser beam, show that the hotspots in our Nb sample are due to trapped vortex bundles which contain ∼ 10 6 vortices spread over regions ∼ 0.1 − 1 cm. We calculated the frequency dependence of the rf power dissipated by oscillating vortex segments trapped between nanoscale pinning centers, taking into account all bending modes and the nonlocal line tension of the vortex driven by rf Meissner currents. We also calculated the temperature distributions caused by trapped vortex hotspots, and suggested a method of reconstructing the spatial distribution of vortex dissipation sources from the observed temperature maps. Vortex hotspots can dominate the residual surface resistance at low temperatures and give rise to a significant dependence of Rs on the rf field amplitude Hp, which can have important implications for the rf resonating cavities used in particle accelerators and for thin film structures used in quantum computing and photon detectors.
We consider nonlinear dynamics of a single vortex in a superconductor in a strong rf magnetic field B0 sin ωt. Using the London theory, we calculate the dissipated power Q(B0, ω), and the transient time scales of vortex motion for the linear Bardeen-Stephen viscous drag force, which results in unphysically high vortex velocities during vortex penetration through the oscillating surface barrier. It is shown that penetration of a single vortex through the ac surface barrier always involves penetration of an antivortex and the subsequent annihilation of the vortex antivortex pairs. Using the nonlinear Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) viscous drag force at higher vortex velocities v(t) results in a jump-wise vortex penetration through the surface barrier and a significant increase of the dissipated power. We calculate the effect of dissipation on nonlinear vortex viscosity η(v) and the rf vortex dynamics and show that it can also result in the LO-type behavior, instabilities, and thermal localization of penetrating vortex channels. We propose a thermal feedback model of η(v), which not only results in the LO dependence of η(v) for a steady-state motion, but also takes into account retardation of temperature field around rapidly accelerating vortex, and a long-range interaction with the surface. We also address the effect of pinning on the nonlinear rf vortex dynamics and the effect of trapped magnetic flux on the surface resistance Rs calculated as a function or rf frequency and field. It is shown that trapped flux can result in a temperature-independent residual resistance Ri at low T , and a hysteretic low-field dependence of Ri(B0), which can decrease as B0 is increased, reaching a minimum at B0 much smaller than the thermodynamic critical field Bc. We propose that cycling of rf field can reduce Ri due to rf annealing of magnetic flux which is pumped out by rf field from the thin surface layer of the order of the London penetration depth.
The performance of superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities made of bulk Nb at high fields (peak surface magnetic field greater than about 90 mT) is characterized by exponentially increasing rf losses (high-field Q slope), in the absence of field emission, which are often mitigated by low-temperature (100-140 C, 12-48 h) baking. In this contribution, recent experimental results and phenomenological models to explain this effect will be briefly reviewed. New experimental results on the high-field Q slope will be presented for cavities that had been heat treated in a vacuum furnace at high temperature without subsequent chemical etching. These studies are aimed at understanding the role of hydrogen on the highfield Q slope and at the passivation of the Nb surface during heat treatment. Improvement of the cavity performances, particularly of the cavities' quality factor, have been obtained following the hightemperature heat treatments, while secondary ion mass spectroscopy surface analysis measurements on Nb samples treated with the cavities revealed significantly lower hydrogen concentration than for samples that followed standard cavity treatments.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.