CERN, Geneva
Amorphous carbon coatings with low secondary electron yield have been applied to the liners in the electron cloud monitors and to vacuum chambers of three dipole magnets in the SPS. The electron cloud is completely suppressed for LHC type beams in these monitors even after 3 months air venting and no performance deterioration is observed after more than one year of SPS operation. Upon variation of the magnetic field in the monitors the electron cloud current maintains its intensity down to weak fields of some 40 Gauss, where fast conditioning is observed. This is in agreement with dark traces observed on the RF shields between dipoles. The dynamic pressure rise has been used to monitor the behavior of the magnets. It is found to be about the same for coated and uncoated magnets, apart from a weak improvement in the carbon coated ones under conditions of intense electron cloud. Inspection of the coated magnet is foreseen in order to detect potential differences with respect to the coated monitors. Measurements of the stray fields outside the dipoles show that they are sufficiently strong to induce electron cloud in these regions.
CERN, Geneva
Electron-cloud is one of the main limitations for particle accelerators with positively charged beams of high intensity and short bunch spacing, as SPS at CERN. The Secondary Electron Yield (SEY) of the inner surface of the vacuum chamber is the main parameter governing the phenomenon. The effect could be eliminated by coating the magnets vacuum chambers with a material of low SEY, which does not require bake-out and is robust against air exposure. For such a purpose amorphous carbon coatings were produced by magnetron sputtering of graphite targets. They exhibit maximum SEY between 0.9 and 1.1 after air transfer to the measuring instrument. After 1 month air exposure the SEY rises to values between 1.1 and 1.4. Storage under nitrogen or by packaging in Al foil makes this increase negligible. The coatings have a similar XPS C1s spectrum for a large set of deposition parameters and exhibit an enlarged line-width compared to pure graphite. The static outgassing without bake-out depends on deposition parameters and is in a range from 1 to 10 times higher than that of stainless steel. Instead, electron stimulated outgassing is lower than for stainless steel and is dominated by CO.
CERN, Geneva
EPFL, Lausanne
Chalmers University of Technology, Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, Gothenburg
Electron cloud is a limitation to increasing the beam current in the CERN SPS in the frame of an intensity upgrade of the LHC complex. Coating the vacuum chamber with a thin amorphous carbon layer is expected to reduce the electron cloud build-up. Three SPS straight sections have been coated to study the performance of this carbon coating. The microwave transmission method is one possible way to monitor electron cloud and hence to test the effect of the coating. In this paper the evolution of the experimental setup for measurements of the electron cloud using LHC type beams with different bunch spacing will be described. Due to the low revolution frequency of about 43 kHz serious electromagnetic compatibility problems and intermodulation have been found. These effects and their mitigation are described. Finally we present the measurement results illustrating the possible reduction due to the carbon coating.