Effect of low-temperature baking on the radio-frequency properties of niobium superconducting cavities for particle accelerators

Radio-frequency superconducting (SRF) cavities are widely used to accelerate a charged particle beam in particle accelerators. The performance of SRF cavities made of bulk niobium has significantly improved over the last ten years and is approaching the theoretical limit for niobium. Nevertheless, RF tests of niobium cavities are still showing some “anomalous” losses that require a better understanding in order to reliably obtain better performance. These losses are characterized by a marked dependence of the surface resistance on the surface electromagnetic field and can be detected by measuring the quality factor of the resonator as a function of the peak surface field. A low-temperature (100–150°C) “in situ” bake under ultrahigh vacuum has been successfully applied as final preparation of niobium RF cavities by several laboratories over the last few years. The benefits reported consist mainly of an improvement of the cavity quality factor at low field and a recovery from “anomalous” losses (so-called “Q drop”) without field emission at higher field. A series of experiments with a CEBAF single-cell cavity have been carried out at Jefferson Lab to carefully investigate the effect of baking at progressively higher temperatures for a fixed time on all the relevant material parameters. Measurements of the cavity quality factor in the temperature range 1.37–280K and resonant frequency shift between 6–9.3K provide information about the surface resistance, energy gap, penetration depth, and mean free path. The experimental data have been analyzed with the complete BCS theory of superconductivity. The hydrogen content of small niobium samples inserted in the cavity during its surface preparation was analyzed with nuclear reaction analysis. The single-cell cavity has been tested at three different temperatures before and after baking to gain some insight on thermal conductivity and Kapitza resistance and the data are compared with different models. This paper describes the results of these experiments and comments on existing models to explain the effect of baking on the performance of niobium RF cavities.