Study of the superconducting properties of Niobium in linear Accelerators

• Applicant: Dr. Sara Casalbuoni
• Subject Area: Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Fields
• Term: from 2002 to 2004
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5362833

The project is focused on the study of the superconducting properties (critical fields, metastability, losses, etc...) of niobium that will be used to build superconducting resonant cavities in linear accelerators. TESLA (Tera Electronvolt Superconducting Linear Accelerator) is a project for a e+ - e- linear collider of initially 500 GeV total energy, extendable to 800 GeV. TESLA is planned to integrate an X-ray laser laboratory, which will allow to probe fast dynamic processes of matter such as biological and chemical reactions and matter phase transitions. Niobium is the choice of the superconducting accelerating structures. The improvement on the cavities performances obtained in the last 10 years made TESLA competitive in cost with the other projects, all using normal conductors. The main advantage of the superconducting technology is the production of high quality beams, which are of eminent importance for both the collider and the XFEL. TESLA needs cavities of ultimate performance. The study of the superconducting properties of niobium is crucial to push the cavities to higher performances. For this reason we want in this work to: characterise the niobium of the cavities materials processed in different ways, study the linear surface resistance and the underlying losses mechanisms and explore their relation to dynamically driven vortex matter.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships