Vacuum Performance of Amorphous Carbon Coating at Cryogenic Temperature with Presence of Proton Beams

Amorphous carbon (a-C) coating is the baseline electron multipacting mitigation strategy proposed for the Inner Triplets (IT) in the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). As of 2014, the COLD bore EXperiment (COLDEX) is qualifying the performance of a-C coating at cryogenic temperature in a LHC type cryogenic vacuum system. In this paper, the experimental results following a cryogenic vacuum characterization of a-C coating in the 5 to 150 K temperature range are reviewed. We discuss the dynamic pressure rise, gas composition, dissipated heat load and electron activity observed within an accumulated beam time of 9 Ah. The results of dedicated experiments including pre-adsorption of different gas species (H2, CO) on the a-C coating are discussed. Based of phenomenological modeling, up-to-date secondary emission input parameters for a-C coatings are retrieved for electron cloud build-up simulations. Finally, first implications for the HL-LHC ITs design are drawn.