Improvements and Performance of the Fermilab Solenoid Test Facility

TLDR: The Solenoid Test Facility at Fermilab was built using a large vacuum vessel for testing of conduction-cooled superconducting solenoid magnets, and was first used to determine the performance of the MICE Coupling Coil as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: The Solenoid Test Facility at Fermilab was built using a large vacuum vessel for testing of conduction-cooled superconducting solenoid magnets, and was first used to determine the performance of the MICE Coupling Coil [1, 2] The facility was modified recently to enable testing of solenoid magnets for the Mu2e experiment, which operate at much higher current than the Coupling Coil One pair of low current conduction-cooled copper and NbTi leads was replaced with two pairs of 10 kA HTS leads cooled by heat exchange with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium The new design, with additional control and monitoring capability, also provides helium cooling of the superconducting magnet leads by conduction A high current power supply with energy extraction was added, and several improvements to the quench protection and characterization system were made Here we present details of these changes and report on performance results from a test of the Mu2e prototype Transport Solenoid (TS) module Progress on additional improvements in preparation for production TS module testing will be presented