JVSJ : Vol. 49 (2006) , No. 12 pp.728-733

Development of Alumina Ceramics Vacuum Chamber for J-PARC

Michikazu KINSHO¹⁾, Yoshio SAITO²⁾, Zenzaburo KABEYA³⁾ and Norio OGIWARA¹⁾

1) Japan Atomic Energy Agency
2) High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
3) Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

(Received February 3, 2006)
(Accepted October 14, 2006)

We successfully developed alumina ceramics vacuum chamber for the 3 GeV-RCS of J-PARC at JAEA. This chamber has titanium flanges and an outer RF shield to reduce duct impedance, and moreover TiN film is coated on the inside surface to preclude charge build up and to reduce secondary emitted electrons. The outgassing rate of the ceramics chamber measured by the conductance modulation method has a sufficiently low value of 1.2×10^-8 Pa m³ s^-1 m² after 50 hours pumping. The temperature of the titanium flange became 45°C due to eddy current heating under dipole magnet operation. It was found that the radiation damage to the capacitor used for the RF shield of this duct was small, the capacitance only decreased by 7% after gamma ray irradiation of 30 MGy. In order to determine effect of the ceramics chamber on the proton beam, this ceramics chamber prepared for J-PARC was installed instead in the 12 GeV main ring at KEK-PS. The proton beam could be controlled to accelerate stably after installation, and thus it was found that this chamber did not influence the beam very much. This ceramics chamber is thus usable for the 3 GeV-RCS of J-PARC.