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The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

- Dorothy Parker

This is my third year working with the Superconducting Radio Frequency group at Cornell. My research can be broken down broadly into two categories.

The first project I have been working on is cavity design for the main linac of Cornell's energy recovery linac. Check here to see how an energy recovery linac works. It is a design project that relies on sophisticated computer codes, and extensive use of parallel computing to obtain a state of the art cavity. For more information on this project, check out the links below.

Secondly, I have been doing material science studies on Niobium. Niobium is an element that has superconducting properties at low temperature (below 9.2K), and is used to construct superconducting cavities. I am interested in determining the fundamental limits of this material, which is necessary to design the next generation of accelerators capable of higher acclerating gradients.

For more information, please see the full list of research papers and presentations

Cavity Design

CAD model of Cornell's 7-cell cavity

Computer model of Cornell's 7-Cell cavity. The coloring corresponds to the intensity of the surface electric fields.

Cornell's energy recovery linac project seeks to generate a very high quality x-ray source with a very high repetition rate. Uses of this technology range from imaging protiens to capturing how chemical reactions take place.

The x-rays are created by bending a high energy beam of electrons that run through a track under Cornell's campus. To obtain an electron beam with the required properties, we need a cavity design that can support high currents and not spoil the beam with undesired electro-magnetic fields.

We use computer clusters to optimize the cavity parameters. The computers must generate cavity geometries and then use EM solvers to compute the fields inside the cavity. Since these calculations can take a long time, parallel computing is a necessity.

The simulation portion of the baseline design is completed and we are currently in the prototyping phase of the cavity design project.

Material Studies

Experimental Setup for Material Measurement

Experimental setup used to measure the superheating field of niobium.

Niobium is a material that has a superconducting state at temperatures below 9.2K. In the superconducting state, the metal looses all resistance to direct currents, and almost all resistance to alternating currents.

The superheating phase can be disrupted by raising the metal temperature too high, as well as keeping the temperature low, and having too large of a magnetic field on the surface. It is possible however, to have a "supersaturated" state, where this limit is metastably surpassed. This is called the superheating field, and is the purpose of much of my study.

Precise knowledge of the superheating field can help next generation particle accelerators, such as the ILC, push their designs to the fundamental physical limits.

Papers on the Superheating Field of Niobium

Recent Developments

Latest Conference Participation

Cornell University hosted a conference on higher-order mode absorbers for particle accelerators, HOM 10. I presented a talk on determining the best region of dielectric constants for beam line absorbing material made of carbon nano tubes.

Latest Publication

At the most recent Linac Conference, we presented work on the baseline cavity design for Cornell's ERL. The paper and poster presented are available below: