• C. Garion, H. Kos
  CERN, Geneva

The Compact LInear Collider, under study, requires vacuum chambers with a very small aperture, of the order of 8 mm in diameter, and with a length up to around 2 m for the main beam quadrupoles. To keep the very tight geometrical tolerances on the quadrupoles, no bake out is allowed. The main issue is to reach UHV conditions (typically 10^-9 mbar static pressure) in a system where the vacuum performance is driven by water outgassing. For this application, a thin-walled stainless steel vacuum chamber with two ante chambers equipped with NEG strips, is proposed. The mechanical design, especially the stability analysis, is shown. The key technologies of the prototype fabrication are given. Vacuum tests have been carried out on the prototypes. The test set-up as well as the performance of the pumping system are presented and compared with predictions.