Commissioning of the superconducting linac at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS)

The use of superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities in particle accelerator is becoming more widespread. Among the projects that make use of that technology is the Spallation Neutron Source, where H-ions are accelerated to about 1 GeV, mostly making use of niobium elliptical cavities. SNS will use the accelerated short (about 700 ns) sub-bunches of protons to generate neutrons by spallation, which will in turn allow probing structural and magnetic properties of new and existing materials. The SNS superconducting linac is the largest application of RF superconductivity to come on-line in the last decade. The SRF cavities, operated at 805 MHz, were designed, built and integrated into cryomodules at Jefferson Lab and installed and tested at SNS. SNS is also the first proton-like accelerator which uses SRF cavities in a pulse mode. Many of the details of the cavity performance are peculiar to this mode of operation, which is also being applied to lepton accelerators (TESLA Test Facility and X-FEL at DESY and the International Linear Collider Project). Thanks to the low frequency of the SNS superconducting cavities, operation at 4.2 K has been possible without beam energy degradation, even though the cavities and cryogenic systems were originally designed for 2.1 K operation. The testing of the superconducting cavities, the operating experience with beam and the performance of the superconducting linac will be presented.