Speaker
Description
Superconducting RadioFrequency (SRF) technology is a key component in many particle accelerators operating in a continuous wave, or high duty cycle, mode. The on-line performance of SRF cavities can be negatively impacted by the gradual reduction in the accelerating gradient that can be attained within a reasonable field emission level. Conventional cleaning procedures are both time- and resource-exhaustive as they are done ex-situ. As such, in-situ techniques are quite attractive. Plasma processing is an emerging in-situ method of cleaning which utilizes a mixture of oxygen and an inert gas to chemically remove hydrocarbon-based field emitters through plasma. At TRIUMF's Advanced Rare IsotopE Laboratory (ARIEL), an R&D program is in place to develop plasma processing procedures using fundamental power couplers on 1.3 GHz ARIEL 9-cell cavities. Single cell and multi-cell processing has been performed off-line. The studies involve varying the input parameters and testing the effectiveness of the treatment through RGA analysis. The progress on the developments will be reported.
