Criteria for Vacuum Breakdown in RF Cavities

Abstract

A new high-voltage scaling based on Kilpatrick's criterion is presented that suggests that voltages more than twice the Kilpatrick limit can be obtained with identical initial conditions of vacuum and surface cleanliness. The calculations are based on the experimentally observed decrease in secondary electron emission with increasing ion impact energy above 100 keV. A generalized secondary-emission package has been developed to simulate actual cavity dynamics in conjunction with our 2½-dimensional fully electromagnetic particle-in-cell code CEMIT. The results are discussed with application to the suppression of vacuum breakdown in rf accelerator devices.