Variation of the Critical Properties of Alloyed Nb-Sn Wires After Proton Irradiation at 65 MeV and 24 GeV

A recent proton irradiation study on Ta and Ti alloyed industrial multifilamentary Nb
₃
Sn wires has now been extended to fluences up to 1.38 × 10
²¹
p/m
²
, the Bragg peak region being located outside of the wire. In the present work, magnetization measurements were performed up to 14 K and 10 T, to follow and determine with more precision the development of the upper critical field B
_c2
with fluence. It was found that the critical temperature, T
_c
, decreases linearly with increasing fluences, about 3% up to the highest fluence 1.38 × 10
²¹
p/m
²
. The transition width does not change after irradiation, thus reflecting a homogeneous damage in analogy to neutron irradiation. Both the critical current density, J
_c
, and the upper critical field, B
_c2
, were found to increase in the considered fluence range. It was obtained that the larger enhancement of J
_c
, (about 45% for Ta alloyed wires and 100% for Ti alloyed wires at 10 T) is not correlated to that of B
_c2
(about 5% for Ti alloyed and 10% for Ta alloyed up to the highest fluence). The enhancement of J
_c
in Ta alloyed wires is very similar for both PIT and RRP processing, thus assigning a major importance to the nature of the additive. The present results after irradiation were analysed applying the two-mechanism model on the volume pinning force, taking into account both grain boundary pinning and point pinning. A comparison between the present results and those achieved after neutron irradiation on the same Nb
₃
Sn wires shows that protons cause considerably higher damage than neutrons: the same effect on J
_c
and T
_c
is already observed at fluences being one order of magnitude smaller.