Present status of superconducting cavity developments

An R and D work of a superconducting (SC) cavity for the high intensity proton linac has begun at JAERI in collaboration with KEK. The RF field calculation and the structural analysis have been made to determine the cavity shape in the proton energy range between 100 and 1500 MeV. The results indicate the feasibility of a SC proton linac. A vertical test stand with clean room, water rinsing system, cavity evacuation pumping system, cryostat and data acquisition system has been installed to demonstrate the cavity performance. A single cell cavity of β=0.5 has been fabricated and tested at the test stand to obtain the Q-value and the maximum surface electric field strength. The measured Q-values have been found to be high enough for our requirement while the field strength was limited to about 75% of the specification by the multipacting. We describe the preliminary design of the SC cavity, the overview of the vertical test stand and experimental results of the single cell cavity. (author)