Engineered Drop-in Systems for Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiments

Plasma wakefield accelerators show significant promise to shrink the size of particle accelerators and their development is well underway at DOE-funded user facilities. These ground-breaking experiments, however, are hampered by existing vacuum chamber technology. Specific issues include the large chamber weight and difficulty in quickly exchanging the chamber or its contents due to the limitations of current chamber technology. The introduction of a lightweight torsion-box chamber walls will drastically decrease the weight of the chambers while the inclusion of spring-energized all-metal O-rings will increase the vacuum performance and radiation hardness of the large lids used to seal the chambers. Furthermore, will we introduce options for motorized alignment of multiple items from outside the vacuum envelope, include kinematic replaceable features, differential pumping, chamber blackening, and other features uniquely required by plasma wakefield experiments. We will prototype the key innovations, including the metal O-ring reusable seals, externally-motorized alignment, and torsion-box construction. After prototyping, we will produce a small scale chamber suitable for use in a UCLA-led experiment at FACET-II. The chamber will be qualified to SLAC’s standards for vacuum cleanliness while also meeting the experimental goals of the experiment and demonstrating the value of our new features. This program will yield a cost-effective method for producing large vacuum chambers suited for accelerator experimentalists and X-ray users. This will maximize investments already made by the DOE in user facilities by increasing the “beam on time.” Additionally, the vacuum chamber technology developed here, such as low-cost and lightweight torsion box walls and the inclusion of metal O-rings for lower pressure and higher radiation resistance, will be extremely beneficial to larger markets in surface coating, semiconductor production, and other industrial processes requiring large, ultra-clean vacuum vessels.