cavity Archives

Niobium axion cavity

A silver object that is shaped somewhat like a toy battleship, with AA-Ti engraved twice on the side facing the camera, sits on a white sheet on a table. In the background, a workshop and Windex.

This niobium axion cavity was made at the Village Machine Shop at Fermilab.

Crab cavity gets its picture taken

Closeup of what looks like the end of a silver spool. Inside, a glowing purple and blue light and a black circle with an off-white triangle pointing downward.

A look inside a crab cavity.

Record lows make for a frosty day in IB4

In 2021, a single-cell niobium superconducting-radio-frequency cavity undergoes chemical electropolishing at minus-4 degrees Celsius to minus-8 degrees Celsius, a record low for this electropolishing tool.

Sensitive qubit-based technique to accelerate search for dark matter

The blue cylinder in this diagram represents a superconducting microwave cavity used to accumulate a dark matter signal. The purple is the qubit used to measure the state of the cavity, either 0 or 1. The value refers to the number of photons counted. If the dark matter has successfully deposited a photon in the cavity, the output would measure 1. No deposition of a photon would measure 0. Image: Akash Dixit, University of Chicago

Quantum bits acting as particle detectors offer a fast and highly reliable means of solving one of the great mysteries in physics: the nature of dark matter. This new method promises a more efficient way to detect dark matter candidates by improving the experimental signal-to-noise ratio.

It’s Spoke Day

Operating at 325 MHz, the single-spoke resonators, or SSRs, are key to the PIP-II cold linac’s performance. The PIP-II SSR technical team declared 3.25 to be Spoke Day.

Noah Curfman works on improving cavity tuners

In March 2021, Noah Curfman is assembling the solenoid, newly built by Bill Robotham’s group, for Laboratory Directed Research and Development: Improving magnetic materials for rapid-cycling synchotron cavity tuners.

Testing wraps up for first Fermilab-designed cryomodule for PIP-II accelerator

Cryomodules of five different types, one of which is the SSR1 pictured here, boost the energy of the beam. cryomodule, beam, PIP-II, superconducting technology, accelerator Photo: Tom Nicol, Fermilab

A Fermilab team has completed tests for a crucial superconducting segment for the PIP-II particle accelerator, the future heart of the Fermilab accelerator chain. The segment, called a cryomodule, will be one of many, but this is the first to be fully designed, assembled and tested at Fermilab. It represents a journey of technical challenges and opportunities for innovation in superconducting accelerator technology.

HL-LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project receives approval to move full-speed-ahead from Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy has given the U.S. High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Accelerator Upgrade Project approval to move full-speed-ahead in building and delivering components for the HL-LHC, specifically, cutting-edge magnets and accelerator cavities that will enable more rapid-fire collisions at the collider. The collider upgrades will allow physicists to study particles such as the Higgs boson in greater detail and reveal rare new physics phenomena. The U.S. collaborators on the project may now move into production mode.

Fermilab attains unprecedented quality factor for LCLS-II accelerator cavity

Members of Fermilab’s Technical Division recently achieved a record-high quality factor with a fully dressed cavity for a SLAC-headed project, Linac Coherent Light Source II.