Continuous Wave Operation of Superconducting Accelerating Cavities With High Loaded Quality Factor

Close to 780 superconducting 1.3-GHz accelerating cavities made of bulk niobium have been installed in the European X-ray free electron laser (E-XFEL) linear accelerator. The linac can operate at a mean gradient (Eacc) of ca. 23 MV/m in the nominal short pulse (SP) operation mode with 1.4-ms pulses and a repetition rate of 10 Hz. An R&D program at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) is ongoing since 2011 on the feasibility of a continuous wave (CW) upgrade of the E-XFEL accelerator. In this publication, a modification of the low-level radio frequency (LLRF) control system to the CW mode is presented. Currently, the control system successfully stabilizes accelerating field for the SP mode. The demanding E-XFEL specifications of 0.01% for the field amplitude and 0.01° for the phase stability are required to keep the photon beam quality for all experimental stations. The proposed modification has been implemented and tested to verify the system versatility for SP and CW operation modes. The tests were conducted for a prototype E-XFEL cryomodule XM-3. As for the series cryomodules, this prototype contains eight superconducting 1.3-GHz cavities. The results presented here confirm that the same LLRF system can be used with minor software modifications for either operation mode (CW or SP). However, the CW mode requires a more complex RF-power management and more precise control, especially when cavities operate with very high loaded quality factor (Ql) of the order of 6E7. The achieved stability for such highQl is also presented and discussed.