Studies of an LL-type 500 MHz 5-cell superconducting cavity at SINAP

A low loss- (LL) type 500 MHz 5-cell superconducting niobium prototype cavity with a large beam aperture has been developed successfully including the optimization, the deep drawing and electron beam welding, the surface treatment and the vertical testing. The performance of the fundamental mode was optimized and the higher order modes were damped by adopting an enlarged beam pipe for propagation. Surface preparation or treatment including mechanical polishing, buffered chemical polishing and high pressure rinsing with ultra-pure water and so on was carried out carefully to ensure a perfect inner surface condition. The vertical testing results show that the accelerating voltage higher than 7.5 MV was obtained while the quality factor was better than 1x10(9) at 4.2 K. No obvious multipacting or field emission was found during the test. However, a quench happened while increasing the field a little higher than 7.5 MV that at present limited the cavity performance.