Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
The Linac
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) was responsible for the superconducting niobium cavities used in the linear accelerator, or linac. The niobium cavities are cooled with liquid helium to an operating temperature of 2 K. The linac, which accelerates the beam of negatively charged hydrogen ions from 2.5 to 1,000 MeV, or 1 GeV, was the responsibility of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The linac is a superposition of normal conducting and superconducting radio-frequency cavities that accelerate the beam and a magnetic lattice that provides focusing and steering. Three different types of accelerators are used at SNS. The first two, the drift-tube linac and the coupled-cavity linac are made of copper, operate at room temperature, and accelerate the beam to about 200 MeV. The superconducting niobium cavities provide the remainder of the acceleration.
The superconducting linac.
