Design, Procurement, Installation and Commissioning of the Cryogenic Infrastructure for a New Superconducting RF Test Facility with Beam at CERN

Abstract

The High-Luminosity LHC project (HL–LHC), aiming at peak luminosity above 5.0 × 1034 cm −2 s −1, considers replacing the matching sections on both sides of the ATLAS and CMS experiments. To complement new focusing quadrupoles, this upgrade considers using the so-called superconducting crab cavities, never operated before with protons and therefore requiring qualification with beam. To this aim, a new cryogenic infrastructure for a superconducting RF test facility was initiated and recently installed at CERN SPS accelerator in 2018. From the early studies of heat load and design principles to the successful tests passed during late 2018, this paper describes the main cryogenic requirements for such a test facility, its design challenges, procurement, installation, and commissioning up to stable operation of the crab cavities module in superfluid helium at 2 K.