The 'Q disease' in superconducting niobium RF cavities
Superconducting niobium cavities can achieve quality (Q0) factors of 1010–1011, more than six orders of magnitude higher than conventional copper cavities. However, to maintain this performance at high accelerating gradient (20 MV/m) the radio‐frequency (rf) surface must be damage and dust free. Cavity preparation techniques therefore routinely include a chemical etch or electropolishing. Under certain conditions, these (and other) treatments can contaminate the niobium with hydrogen. Hydrides may then form when the cavity is cooled through 150 K, even if only a few atomic percent hydrogen are present. If hydrides are formed, the cavity quality can degrade substantially (Q disease). A rapid cooldown often inhibits the hydride formation. Other “cures” include degassing cavities at 900 °C to eliminate the hydrogen. A historical review of the Q disease is provided here, with the emphasis being placed on its discovery, symptoms, mechanism, and cures.

title: EUROFEL: Europe Tackles Key Issues of Free Electron Lasers
abstract: During the last few years Europe has made enormous progress towards free electron laser (FEL)-based research infrastructures. The FLASH facility  at DESY in Hamburg, Germany, has been in user operation since the summer of 2005; FERMI@Elettra  in Trieste, Italy, is under construction; the European XFEL  in Hamburg will start construction in summer 2008; and several other FEL projects are being prepared in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. In addition, a number of dedicated test facilities have become available, including the photo-injector test facility (PITZ)  and the cryomodule test bench (CMTB)  at DESY, the HoBiCaT facility for testing superconducting cavities [6] at BESSY, Berlin, Germany, the SPARC facility [7] at INFN-LNF in Frascati, Italy, and the ERL Prototype (ERLP)  at Daresbury Laboratory, UK. They have been strongly supported by the national stakeholders in order to prepare the design of new FEL sources.

title: First Demonstration of Electron Beam Generation and Characterization with an All Superconducting Radio-frequency (SRF) Photoinjector
abstract: In preparation for a high brightness, high average current electron source for the energy recovery linac BERLinPro an all superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) photoinjector is now in operation at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. The aim of this experiment is beam demonstration with a high brightness electron source able to generate short, few ps long pulse length electron bunches from a superconducting (SC) cathode film made of Pb coated on the backplane of a Nb SRF cavity. This paper describes the setup of the experiment, first results from beam measurements and capabilities of the source derived from beam dynamics considerations. In April 2011 the photoinjector generated and accelerated for the first time electron beam. This result marks the highlight of the project running for two years starting with project approval in May 2009.

title: First Considerations Concerning an Optimized Cavity Design for the Main Linac of BERLinPro
abstract: The Berlin Energy Recovery Linac Project (BERLinPro) is designed to develop and demonstrate CW linac technology and expertise required to drive next-generation Energy Recovery Linacs. Strongly HOM-damped multicell 1.3 GHz cavities are required for the main linac. The optimization of the cavities presented here is primarily based on the CEBAF 1.5 GHz 5-cell high-current cavity design, including HOM waveguide couplers. The cavity was scaled to 1.3 GHz and extended to 7 cells. Modifications to the end group design have also been studied. An effort was also made to reduce the ratio Epk/Eacc while still permitting HOMs to propagate.

title: FIRST CHARACTERIZATION OF A FULLY SUPERCONDUCTING RF PHOTOINJECTOR CAVITY
abstract: As a first step towards a high brightness, high average current electron source for the BERLinPro ERL a fully superconducting photo-injector was developed by HZB in collaboration with JLab, DESY and the A. Soltan Institute. This cavity-injector ensemble is made up of a 1.6-cell superconducting cavity with a superconducting lead cathode deposited on the half-cell backwall. A superconducting solenoid is used for emittance compensation. This system, including a diagnostics beamline, has been installed in the HoBiCaT facility to serve as a testbed for beam dynamics studies and to test the combination SRF cavity and superconducting solenoid. This paper summarizes the characterization of the cavity in this configuration including Q measurements, dark current tests and field-stability analyses.

title: FABRICATION , TREATMENT AND TESTING OF A 1 . 6 CELL PHOTO- INJECTOR CAVITY FOR HZB
abstract: As an amendment to a CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) between Forschungszentrum Dresden (FZD) and JLab we have fabricated and tested after appropriate surface treatment a 1.6 cell, 1300 MHz RRR niobium photo-injector cavity to be used in a demonstration test at HZB. Following a baseline test at JLab, the cavity received a lead spot coating of ~8 mm diameter deposited with a cathode arc at the Soltan Institute on the endplate made from large grain niobium. It had been demonstrated in earlier tests with a DESY built 1.6 cell cavity – the original design – that a lead spot of this size can be a good electron source, when irradiated with a laser light of 213 nm. In the initial test with the lead spot we could measure a peak surface electric field of ~29 MV/m; after a second surface treatment, carried out to improve the cavity performance, but which was not done with sufficient precaution, the lead spot was destroyed and the cavity had to be coated a second time. This contribution reports about the experiences and results obtained with this cavity.

title: First measurement of the quark-to-photon fragmentation function
abstract: Earlier measurements at LEP of isolated hard photons in hadronic Z decays, attributed to radiation from primary quark pairs, have been extended in the ALEPH experiment to include hard photon productioninside hadron jets. Events are selected where all particles combine democratically to form hadron jets, one of which contains a photon with a fractional energyz≥0.7. After statistical subtraction of non-prompt photons, the quark-to-photon fragmentation function,D(z), is extracted directly from the measured 2-jet rate. By taking into account the perturbative contributions toD(z) obtained from anO(ααs) QCD calculation, the unknown non-perturbative component ofD(z) is then determined at highz. Provided due account is taken of hadronization effects nearz=1, a good description of the other event topologies is then found.

title: Charged-particle multiplicities inppinteractions measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
abstract: (2011) 053033 (68pp) Received 22 December 2010 Published 19 May 2011 Online at http://www.njp.org/ doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/5/053033 Measurements √ are presented from proton–proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of s = 0.9, 2.36 and 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events were collected using a single-arm minimum- bias trigger. The charged-particle multiplicity, its dependence on transverse momentum and pseudorapidity and the relationship between the mean transverse momentum and charged-particle multiplicity are measured. Measurements in different regions of phase space are shown, providing diffraction-reduced measurements as well as more inclusive ones. The observed distributions are corrected to well-defined phase-space regions, using model-independent corrections. The results are compared to each other and to various Monte Carlo (MC) models, including a new AMBT1 pythia6 tune. In all the kinematic regions considered, the particle multiplicities are higher than predicted by the MC models. The central charged-particle multiplicity per event and unit of pseudorapidity, for tracks √ with p T > 100 MeV, is measured to be 3.483 ± 0.009 (stat) (syst) at s = 0.9 TeV and 5.630 ± 0.003 (stat) ± 0.169 (syst) at s = 7 TeV. Abstract. New Journal of Physics 13 (2011) 053033  Content may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation and DOI.

title: Search for a very light CP odd neutral Higgs boson of the MSSM
abstract: The reactions have been used to search for the neutral Higgs bosons h and A of the MSSM in the case where the CP-odd A is lighter than 2mμ, taking into account the large h → AA decay branching ratio. No signal was found in the data sample collected until the end of 1991 by the ALEPH experiment at LEP. For tan β ⩾, mA < 2mμ is excluded at 95% CL for any mh.

title: Search for anomalous production of prompt like-sign muon pairs and constraints on physics beyond the standard model with the ATLAS detector
abstract: An inclusive search for anomalous production of two prompt, isolated muons with the same electric charge is presented. The search is performed in a data sample corresponding to 1.6 fb(-1) of integr ...

title: A precise measurement of the average b hadron lifetime
abstract: An improved measurement of the average b hadron lifetime is performed using a sample of 1.5 million hadronic Z decays, collected during the 1991–1993 runs of ALEPH, with the silicon vertex detector fully operational. This uses the three-dimensional impact parameter distribution of lepton tracks coming from semileptonic b decays and yields an average b hadron lifetime of 1.533 ± 0.013 ± 0.022 ps.