Development of sustainable Superconducting RF for UK-XFEL

This PhD study is based on the development of thin film-coated superconducting RF cavities for the UK X-ray Free Electron Laser (UK-XFEL) design study.

Current particle accelerators use huge amounts of energy but not all of it goes into the beam, a significant fraction is lost as heat due to the surface resistance of the RF cavities. This additional energy must be delivered from the electrical grid and hence leads to higher CO2 emissions.

Future colliders will need to be more sustainable and a collaborative program at STFC and Lancaster University has been initiated to develop superconducting cavities, which have much lower surface resistances, to meet future needs of a number of future projects.

The project will investigate the use of thin coatings of novel superconducting materials to provide the highest performance as well as minimizing the power demand for the UK-XFEL As well as improving efficiency novel materials offer the potential for substantially higher accelerating fields making accelerators substantially smaller.