There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

The LHCb experiment is dedicated to precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of B hadrons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva). The initial configuration and expected performance of the detector and associated systems, as established by test beam measurements and simulation studies, is described.

/pdf/the-lhcb-detector-at-the-lhc-4jjatn85hz.pdf

The LHCb detector at the LHC

We report a surface treatment that systematically improves the quality factor of niobium radio frequency cavities beyond the expected limit for niobium. A combination of annealing in a partial pressure of nitrogen or argon gas and subsequent electropolishing of the niobium cavity surface leads to unprecedented low values of the microwave surface resistance, and an improvement in the efficiency of the accelerating structures up to a factor of 3, reducing the cryogenic load of superconducting cavities for both pulsed and continuous duty cycles. The field dependence of the surface resistance is reversed compared to standardly treated niobium.

Nitrogen and argon doping of niobium for superconducting radio frequency cavities: a pathway to highly efficient accelerating structures

Detailed study of the equation of state, elasticity, and hardness of selected superconducting transition-metal nitrides reveals interesting correlations among their physical properties. Both the bulk modulus and Vickers hardness are found to decrease with increasing zero-pressure volume in NbN, HfN, and ZrN. The computed elastic constants from first principles satisfy c(11) > c(12) > c(44) for NbN, but c(11) > c(44) > c(12) for HfN and ZrN, which are in good agreement with the neutron scattering data. The cubic delta-NbN superconducting phase possesses a bulk modulus of 348 GPa, comparable to that of cubic boron nitride, and a Vickers hardness of 20 GPa, which is close to sapphire. Theoretical calculations for NbN show that all elastic moduli increase monotonically with increasing pressure. These results suggest technological applications of such materials in extreme environments.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/102/9/3198.full.pdf

Hard superconducting nitrides.

/pdf/nitrogen-and-argon-doping-of-niobium-for-superconducting-1daty5bicb.pdf

https://cds.cern.ch/record/442323/files/est-1999-007.pdf

Vacuum properties of TiZrV non-evaporable getter films

A novel route to extreme vacua: The non-evaporable getter thin film coatings

Decreasing surface outgassing by thin film getter coatings

A systematic study of superconducting properties of niobium films sputtered on the inner wall of radiofrequency cavities is presented. The measured quantities include in particular the response to 1.5 GHz microwaves, the critical temperature, the penetration depth and the magnetic penetration field. In addition to films grown in different gas discharges (Xe, Kr, Ar and Ar/Ne mixtures) and to films grown on substrates prepared under different conditions, the study also includes bulk niobium cavities. The surface resistance is analysed in terms of its dependence on temperature, on RF field and, when relevant, on the density of trapped fluxons. A simple parameterisation is found to give a good fit to the data. Once allowance for the presence of impurities and defects is made by means of a single parameter, the electron mean free path, good agreement with BCS theory is observed. The fluxon-induced losses are studied in detail and their dependence on RF field, on temperature and on the density of trapped fluxons is analysed. The residual resistance is observed to be essentially uncorrelated with the other variables, suggesting that it is dominantly extragranular. In occasions very low residual resistances, in the nΩ range, have been maintained over a broad range of RF field, indicating the absence of significant fundamental limitations specific to the film technology in practical applications such as the production of accelerating cavities for particle accelerators.

http://cds.cern.ch/record/433395/files/est-1999-002.pdf

Study of the surface resistance of superconducting niobium films at 1.5 GHz

The vacuum behavior of stainless steel vacuum chambers, ex situ sputter coated with a thin film (∼1 μm) of getter material, has been studied to determine if after air exposure the getter film could be activated by a bakeout so as to transform the coated vacuum chamber into a pump. The materials studied so far are Ti, Zr, Hf, and some of their binary alloys. They all display an activation temperature lower than 400 °C, i.e., within the reach of the baking temperature of stainless steel vacuum chambers. The lowest activation temperature of 200–250 °C, measured for an equiatomic alloy of Ti and Zr, allows extension of this method to chambers made of copper and aluminum alloys. The experimental results, described here in detail, indicate that the values of the activation temperature obtained using electron stimulated desorption, pumping speed, and Auger spectroscopy measurements are self-consistent.

Cristoforo Benvenuti

Papers

Vacuum properties of TiZrV non-evaporable getter films

A novel route to extreme vacua: The non-evaporable getter thin film coatings

Decreasing surface outgassing by thin film getter coatings

Study of the surface resistance of superconducting niobium films at 1.5 GHz

Nonevaporable getter films for ultrahigh vacuum applications