Superconducting materials testing with a high-Q copper RF cavity

Superconducting RF is of increasing importance in particle accelerators. We have developed a resonant cavity with high quality factor and an interchangeable wall for testing of superconducting materials. A compact TE01 mode launcher attached to the coupling iris selectively excites the azimuthally symmetric cavity mode, which allows a gap at the detachable wall and is free of surface electric fields that could cause field emission, multipactor, and RF breakdown. The shape of the cavity is tailored to focus magnetic field on the test sample. We describe cryogenic experiments conducted with this cavity. An initial experiment with copper benchmarked our apparatus. This was followed by tests with Nb and MgB₂. In addition to characterizing the onset of superconductivity with temperature, our cavity can be resonated with a high power klystron to determine the surface magnetic field level sustainable by the material in the superconducting state. A feedback code is used to make the low level RF drive track the resonant frequency.