Cavity Mode Related Wire Breaking of the SPS Wire Scanners and Loss Measurements of Wire Materials

During the SPS high intensity run 2002 with LHC type beam, the breaking of several of the carbon wires in the wire scanners has been observed in their parking position. The observation of large changes in the wire resistivity and thermionic electron emission clearly indicated strong RF heating that was depending on the bunch length. A subsequent analysis in the laboratory, simulating the beam by two probe antennas or by a powered stretched wire, showed two main problems: i) the housing of the wire scanner acts as a cavity with a mode spectrum starting around 350 MHz and high impedance values around 700 MHz; ii) the carbon wire used so far appears to be an excellent RF absorber and thus dissipates a significant part of the beam-induced power. Different wire materials are compared with the classical cavity mode technique for the determination of the complex permittivity in the range of 2-4 GHz. As a resonator a rectangular TE_01n type device is utilized.