Cooling of the LHC Injection Kicker Magnet Ferrite Yoke: Measurements and Future Proposals

LHC operation with high intensity beam, stable for many hours, resulted in significant heating of the ferrite yoke of the LHC Injection Kicker Magnets. For one kicker magnet the ferrite yoke approached its Curie temperature. As a result of a long thermal time-constant the yoke can require several hours to cool sufficiently to allow re-injection of beam, thus limiting the running efficiency of the LHC. The beam screen, which screens the ferrite yoke from wakefields, has been upgraded to limit ferrite heating. In addition it is important to improve the cooling of the ferrite yoke: one method is to increase the internal emissivity of the cylindrical vacuum tank, in which the kicker magnet is installed. This paper describes a method developed for measuring the emissivity of the inside of the tanks, which has been benchmarked against measurements of the ferrite yoke temperature during heat treatment in an oven and transient thermal simulations. Conclusions are drawn regarding an ion bombardment technique evaluated for improving emissivity without degrading vacuum properties. In addition initial concepts for improved cooling are presented.