Impact of heat treatments on the performance of low-frequency superconducting quarter-wave resonators at 4.3 K

TL;DR

This study investigates how heat treatments, specifically low-temperature bake-outs, improve the performance of niobium superconducting resonators at 4.3 K by reducing surface resistance and Q-slope, with limited effects from medium-temperature baking.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a 120°C, 48-hour bake-out significantly enhances low-frequency resonator performance, providing insights into the mechanisms behind surface resistance reduction.

Findings

Low-temperature bake-out reduces surface resistance by 2-3 times.

Medium-temperature bake-out at 350°C shows no performance improvement.

Low-temperature bake-out decreases medium-field Q-slope by 38% on average.

Abstract

We applied heat treatments to 80.5 MHz quarter-wave resonators made from bulk niobium and prepared with buffered chemical polishing BCP. We evaluated their performance at 4.3 K. We found that a 48 hour, 120 C bake-out ("low-temperature bake out") reduces the surface resistance by a factor of 2 to 3, stemming from a reduction in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer contribution, consistent with previous findings. This decrease leads to a 38% decrease on average in the medium-field Q-slope when compared to cavities which had only BCP. Mechanisms for the change in quality factor with low-temperature baking have been explored. We observed no improvement in cavity performance after a 3-hour bake-out at 350 C ("medium-temperature bake out"), in contrast to observations for higher-frequency cavities.