CLASSE, Ithaca, New York
Superconducting RF cavity quench location is presently a cumbersome procedure requiring two or more expensive cold tests with large arrays of thermometers. One cold test identifies the cell-pair involved via quench field measurements. A second test follows with numerous fixed thermometers attached to the culprit cell-pair to identify the particular cell. A third measurement with many localized thermometers is necessary to zoom in on the quench spot. By operating superconducting RF cavities at temperatures below the λ point the second sound wave emanating from the location where quench occurred can be utilized to triangulate on the quench-spot. Here a method which utilizes a few (e.g. 8) oscillating superleak transducers (OST) to detect the He-II second sound wave driven by the defect induced quench is discussed. Results characterizing defect location with He-II second sound wave OST detection, corroborating measurements with carbon thermometers, and second sound aided cavity repairs will be presented.
CLASSE, Ithaca, New York
Cornell University’s superconducting cavity development program is one contributor to the global collaborative effort on critical SRF R&D for the ILC. We conduct R&D in support of the baseline cavity development as well as several alternate cavity development paths. For the baseline program we are preparing and testing ILC cavities. We have developed a new quench detection system and successfully applied it to ILC 9-cell and 1-cell cavities to find quench producing defects, which were characterized with subsequent optical examination. We have successfully repaired a 9-cell cavity using tumbling to raise the accelerating gradient from 15 to above 30 MV/m. We have identified quench producing defects in single-cell cavities using our large-scale thermometry system and subsequently extracted and inspected the defect region with an SEM. For the alternate R&D, we are developing reentrant cavity shapes with 70 mm and 60 mm apertures, and a simpler, potentially faster and less expensive electropolishing method called vertical electropolishing. We are also assisting in developing new cavity vendors by rapidly testing single-cell cavities they produced to qualify their fabrication methods.