Superconducting linac at Inter-University Accelerator Centre: Operational challenges and solutions

A superconducting linear accelerator based on niobium quarter wave resonators has recently become operational to boost the energy of the heavy ion beams available from the existing 15 UD (unit doubled) Pelletron accelerator. The niobium resonators typically performed at an accelerating field of 3–6  MV/m at 6 watts of input power in the test cryostat. When they were tested in the linac cryostat, the accelerating fields were drastically reduced and a number of other problems were also encountered. At present, all the problems have been diagnosed and solved. Many design modifications, e.g., in power coupler, mechanical tuner, helium cooling system, etc. were incorporated to solve the problems. A novel method of vibration damping was also implemented to reduce the effect of microphonics on the resonators. Finally, the accelerated beam through linac was delivered to conduct experiments.