Progress at the FREIA Laboratory

Abstract

The FREIA Facility for Research Instrumentation and Accelerator Development at Uppsala University, Sweden, has reached the stage where the testing of superconducting cavities for the European Spallation Source (ESS) is starting. The new helium liquefaction plant has been commissioned and now supplies a custom-made, versatile horizontal cryostat, HNOSS, with liquid helium at up to 140 l/h. The cryostat has been designed and built to house up to two accelerating cavities, or, later on, other superconducting equipment such as magnets or crab cavities. A prototype cavity for the spoke section of the ESS linac will arrive mid 2015 for high-power testing in the horizontal cryostat. Two tetrode-based commercial RF power stations will deliver 400 kW peak power each, at 352 MHz, to the cavity through an RF distribution line developed at FREIA. In addition, significant progress has been made with in-house development of solid state amplifier modules and powercombiners for future use in particle accelerators. We report here on these and other ongoing activities at the FREIA laboratory.