Photon-stimulated desorption yields from stainless steel and copper-plated beam tubes with various pretreatments

Photon-stimulated desorption (PSD) from the walls of electron storage rings and associated beamlines imposes serious limits on their beam quality and beam lifetimes. Stainless steel (SS) is the most used material for beam lines and its use has become more dominant for dedicated light sources. Copper-plated SS beam pipes have been selected for the superconducting super collider (SSC) project. Three-meter-long tubes of 3, 8.8, and 10 cm diameter were prepared using the following pretreatments common in storage rings. The samples were chemically cleaned only, vacuum baked to 200 degree C, vacuum fired to 950 degree C, and argon--oxygen glow-discharge conditioned. A dedicated beam line at the National Synchrotron Light Source was used to measure PSD from the samples. Desorption was measured as a function of beam current during exposure to white light having a critical energy of 500 MeV. Our results are presented and compared with PSD from previous work on aluminum and SS here and at other laboratories. Glow-discharged SS yields the lowest PSD