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This paper describes the evaporative system used to cool the silicon detector structures of the inner detector sub-detectors of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The motivation for an evaporative system, its design and construction are discussed. In detail the particular requirements of the ATLAS inner detector, technical choices and the qualification and manufacture of final components are addressed. Finally results of initial operational tests are reported. Although the entire system described, the paper focuses on the on-detector aspects. Details of the evaporative cooling plant will be discussed elsewhere.

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Oriented single-crystalline thin films of NiO and Fe304, and Fe304/NiO superlattices have been grown on cleaved and polished substrates of MgO(001), using oxygen-plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. We report the growth mode and structural characterization of the grown films using in situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and ex situ scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. The (001) surface of MgO provides an excellent template for the pseudomorphic growth of these thin films and superlattices, for it has a very small lattice mismatch (0.3-0.9%) to the cubic rocksalt structure of Ni0 and to the half unit-cell dimension of the spinel structure of Fe304. Superlattices consisting of alternating layers of NiO and Fe304 have been grown with a repeat wavelength down to 20 0 A (approximately one Fe304 unit cell plus two NiO unit cells) thick. These superlattices exhibit strong crystalline ordering and sharp interface formation. RHEED pattern evolution in situ during growth indicates formation of the rocksalt NiO crystalline symmetry and then the spinel Fe304 crystalline symmetry in a periodic sequence as each material is being deposited. Our data indicate single-phase crystal growth in registry with the substrate, with films of overall cubic symmetry. Strain in the grown films exhibits interesting effects that clearly do not follow a simple elastic model.

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An upgrade to the ATLAS silicon tracker cooling control system may require a change from C 3 F 8 (octafluoro-propane) evaporative coolant to a blend containing 10-25 % of C 2 F 6 (hexafluoro-ethane). Such a change will reduce the evaporation temperature to assure thermal stability following radiation damage accumulated at full LHC luminosity.Central to this upgrade is a new ultrasonic instrument in which sound transit times are continuously measured in opposite directions in flowing gas at known temperature and pressure to deduce the C 3 F 8 /C 2 F 6 flow rate and mixture composition. The instrument and its Supervisory, Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software are described in this paper.Several geometries for the instrument are in use or under evaluation. An instrument with a 'pinched axial' geometry intended for analysis and measurement of moderate flow rates has demonstrated a mixture resolution of 3.10 -3 for C 3 F 8 /C 2 F 6 molar mixtures with ~20 %C 2 F 6 , and a flow resolution of 2 % of full scale for mass flows up to 30gs -1 . In mixtures of widelydiffering molecular weight (mw), higher mixture precision is possible: a sensitivity of < 5.10 -5 to leaks of C 3 F 8 into part of the ATLAS tracker nitrogen envelope (mw difference 160) has been seen.An instrument with an angled sound path geometry has been developed for use at high fluorocarbon mass flow rates of around 1.2 kgs -1 -corresponding to full flow in a new 60kW thermosiphon recirculator under construction for the ATLAS silicon. Extensive computational fluid dynamics studies were performed to determine the preferred geometry (the ultrasonic transducer spacing and placement together with the sound crossing angle with respect to the vapour flow direction). A prototype instrument with 45º crossing angle has demonstrated a flow resolution of 1.9 % of full scale for linear flow velocities up to 15 ms -1 .In addition a further variant of the instrument is under development to allow the detection and elimination of incondensable vapour accumulating in the condenser of a fluorocarbon recirculator.The combined flowmeter and binary gas analysis instrument has many potential applications, including the analysis of hydrocarbons, vapour mixtures for semi-conductor manufacture and anaesthetic gas mixtures.

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The best rf bulk niobium accelerating cavities have nearly reached their ultimate limits at rf equatorial magnetic field H % 200 mT close to the thermodynamic critical field H c . In 2006 Gurevich proposed to use nanoscale layers of superconducting materials with high values of H c > H c Nb for magnetic shielding of bulk niobium to increase the breakdown magnetic field of superconducting rf cavities. Depositing good quality layers inside a whole cavity is rather difficult, so as a first step, characterization of single layer coating and multilayers was conducted on high quality sputtered samples by applying the technique used for the preparation of superconducting electronics circuits. The samples were characterized by x-ray reflectivity, dc resistivity (PPMS), and dc magnetization (SQUID) measurements. Dc magnetization curves of a 250 nm thick Nb film have been measured, with and without a magnetron sputtered coating of a single or multiple stack of 15 nm MgO and 25 nm NbN layers. The Nb samples with/without the coating exhibit different behaviors and clearly show an enhancement of the magnetic penetration field. Because SQUID measurements are influenced by edge and shape effects, we propose to develop a specific local magnetic measurement of H C1 based on ac third harmonic analysis in order to reveal the true screening effect of multilayers.