Cryogenics for Particle Accelerators and Detectors

Cryogenics has become a key ancillary technology of particle accelerators and detectors, contributing to their sustained development over the last fifty years. Conversely, this development has produced new challenges and markets for cryogenics, resulting in a fruitful symbiotic relation which materialized in significant technology transfer and technical progress. This began with the use of liquid hydrogen and deuterium in the targets and bubble chambers of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It developed more recently with increasing amounts of liquefied noble gases - mainly argon, but also krypton and even today xenon - in calorimeters. In parallel with these applications, the availability of practical type II superconductors from the early 1960s triggered the use of superconductivity in large spectrometer magnets - mostly driven by considerations of energy savings - and the corresponding development of helium cryogenics. It is however the generalized application of superconductivity in particle accelerators - RF acceleration cavities and high-field bending and focusing magnets - which has led to the present expansion of cryogenics, with kilometer-long strings of helium-cooled devices, powerful and efficient refrigerators and superfluid helium used in high tonnage as cooling medium. This situation was well reflected over the last decades by the topical courses of the CERN Accelerator School (CAS). In 1988, CAS and DESY jointly organized the first school on Superconductivity in Particle Accelerators, held at Haus Rissen in Hamburg, where I shared the h. and duty of lecturing on cryogenics with Professor J.L. Olsen of ETH Z rich, while P. Seyfert of CEA Grenoble delivered an evening seminar on superfluidity. This successful school was reiterated in 1995, with cryogenics being addressed by Professor W.F. Vinen of University of Birmingham (superfluidity), as well as J. Schmid (thermodynamics and refrigeration) and myself (superfluid helium technology) of CERN. In the CAS School on Superconductivity and Cryogenics for Particle Accelerators and Detectors held in May 2002 in Erice, Sicily, I am particularly pleased to see a more complete syllabus in cryogenics, most of which is covered by CERN colleagues and published in this report. This is in my view, another sign of the development and vitality of this discipline at CERN, primarily in the LHC division which, by virtue of its mandate and competence, is presently building the largest helium cryogenic system in the world for the Large Hadron Collider and its experiments. I hope this report constitutes a useful source of information and updated reference for our staff dedicated to this formidable endeavour.