EFFECT OF LOW TEMPERATURE BAKING ON NIOBIUM CAVITIES

A low temperature (100°C-150°C) "in situ" baking under ultra-high vacuum has been successfully applied as final preparation of niobium RF cavities by several laboratories over the last few years. The benefits reported consist mainly of an improvement of the cavity quality factor and a recovery from the so-called "Q-drop" without field emission at high field. A series of experiments with a CEBAF single cell cavity have been carried out at Jefferson Lab to carefully investigate the effect of baking at progressively higher temperatures for a fixed time on all the relevant material parameters. Measurements of the cavity quality factor in the temperature range 1.37K-280K and resonant frequency shift between 6K-9.3K provide information about the surface resistance, energy gap, penetration depth and mean free path. The experimental data have been analyzed with the complete BCS theory of superconductivity using a modified version of the computer code originally written by J. Halbritter (1). Small niobium samples inserted in the cavity during its surface preparation were analyzed with respect to their hydrogen content with a Nuclear Reaction Analysis