Temperature Dependent Effects on RF Surface Resistivity

A promising future for linear accelerators such as compact free electron lasers and electron positron colliders is higher gradient RF cavities enabled by cryogenic temperature operation. Breakdown rates have been shown empirically to be significantly reduced at low temperatures allowing for higher gradient. The surface physics associated with this observation is complicated and there many remain questions as to the exact phenomena responsible. One major figure of merit that can better inform the theory of breakdown is the RF surface resistivity which can be used to compute for example the RF pulse heating during operation. We then use techniques developed for previous Xband and Sband low power surface resistivity measurement by way of temperature dependent quality factor measurements to study Cband cavities. We first present a review of low temperature effects that may be responsible for the change in surface resistivity at low temperature. We then explain some of the initial measurements of these low power RF quality factor tests and compare them to a review some of the physical phenomena that could determine the low temperature surface effects.
Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand