• Q.S. Shu, G. Cheng, J. T. Susta
  AMAC, Newport News, Virginia
• S.J. Einarson
  CPI/BMD, Beverley, Massachusetts
• T. Garvey
  LAL, Orsay
• W.-D. Müller, D. Proch
  DESY, Hamburg
• T.A. Treado
  CPI, Beverley, Massachusetts

More and more accelerators are built with superconducting cavities operating at cryogenic temperatures, and the probability of a ceramic window failure presents increasing problems because of the resulting contamination of the cavities surfaces and the resulting accelerating electric field degradation. A cost effective design and fabrication method for the TESLA cavities has been developed in the framework of a DOE STTR grant. This new design replaces the present TESLA cylindrical ceramic windows with two planar disc windows separated by a vacuum space and is optimized for RF input power, vacuum characteristics, and thermal properties. This novel coupler will reduce the costs of fabrication and improve the RF performance of the coupler, the vacuum between the two windows, and the cleaning procedure. Two couplers with this design have been fabricated and are presently being conditioned for testing at DESY, Germany, and LAL, France, on the RF high power testing stand and on a test cryomodule.

• O. Napoly, R. Aleksan, A. Devred
  CEA/DSM/DAPNIA, Gif-sur-Yvette
• A. Den Ouden
  Twente University, Laser Physics and Non-Linear Optics Group, Enschede
• R. Garoby, R. Losito, L. Rinolfi, F. Ruggiero, W. Scandale, D. Schulte, M. Vretenar
  CERN, Geneva
• T. Garvey, F. Richard
  LAL, Orsay
• A. Ghigo
  INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
• E. Gschwendtner
  CUI, Geneva
• H. Mais, D. Proch
  DESY, Hamburg
• V. Palladino
  INFN-Napoli, Napoli

CARE, an ambitious and coordinated programme of accelerator research and developments oriented towards HEP projects, has been launched in January 2004 by the main European laboratories and the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme. This programme aims at improving existing infrastructures dedicated to future projects such as linear colliders, upgrades of hadron colliders and high intensity proton drivers. An important part of this programme is devoted to advancing the performance of the superconducting technology, both in the fields of RF cavities for electron and proton acceleration and of high field magnets, as well as to developing high intensity electron and proton injectors. We describe the R&D plans of the four main R&D activities and report on the results and progress obtained so far.