Technical Developments on Reduced $\beta$ Superconducting Cavities at CERN

Several authors proposed the construction of superconducting proton linacs using the LEP2 cavities once LEP will be decommissioned. However only a fraction (about half) of these cavities can be used as they are for the high-energy part (b~1) of such a linac, the low energy part requiring the development of accelerating structures optimized for lower values of the particle velocity. At CERN an R&D programme on reduced-b single-cell cavities started in 1996 in order to study and explore the limits of the technology successfully used for the production of LEP2 cavities (copper cavities niobium-plated using the magnetron sputtering technique). Four different geometries were extensively investigated, each representing part of a multicell structure optimized for particles having b=0.48, b=0.625, b=0.66 and b=0.8 respectively. The results were encouraging for the last two types and therefore a new phase of R&D aimed at the production of multicell cavities for b=0.66 and b=0.8 was started. The goal is to demonstrate simultaneously the feasibility of such cavities and the possibility of producing them by low-cost modification of LEP cavities.