Novel automatic phase lock determination for superconducting cavity tests at vertical test stand at RRCAT

RRCAT has developed a Vertical Test Stand (VTS) which is used to test the Nb superconducting cavities under cryogenic conditions. In the VTS, RF cavity is characterized for its quality factor variation vs the accelerating gradient. The RF system is an essential part of the VTS which is required to provide stable RF power to the cavity in terms of amplitude, frequency and phase. RF system of VTS consists of several modules including the LLRF system. The LLRF system consists of the 'Frequency Control Module' which controls the input frequency to the SCRF cavity. Due to high quality factor, bandwidth of the cavity is less than 1 Hz. Even slight mechanical vibrations (microphonics) causes change in cavity resonance frequency resulting in total reflection of incident power. A PLL based frequency tracking module has been used to track the resonant frequency of RF cavity. This module changes RF source frequency according to change in Cavity resonance frequency. A novel method using a LabView based computer program has been developed which changes the phase of input RF signal using IQ modulator and monitors the transmitted power, incident and reflected power. The program plots the graph between phase and ratio of transmitted power to incident/reflected power and gives optimum locking phase for operation which has resulted in significant saving in the overall process time for the tests of the cavities in VTS. (author)