No. 39 (2006): Pushing the limits of RF superconductivity

Issue Editor: K. J. Kim, Editor-in-Chief: W. Chou

The theme papers in this issue are from the Workshop on Pushing the Limits of RF Superconductivity held at Argonne National Laboratory on September 22–24, 2004. The workshop was special because, although it was planned well before, it took place just a few days after the International Technology Review Panel made its historic recommendation that the superconducting RF technology be the basis of the International Linear Collider (ILC).

The interest in SCRF goes beyond the ILC—the technology is the basis for other major accelerator projects such as the Spallation Neutron Source and the Rare Isotope Accelerator, and future light sources such as energy recovery linacs and x-ray free-electron lasers. Pushing the limits in accelerating gradient and Q is critically important for all these accelerators in reducing their size, construction cost, and operating budgets—in short, in making them affordable.

I believe that it is worthwhile to collect these papers by leading experts in the theme section of this Newsletter due to the importance of the topic and because the proceedings of the Workshop containing the original versions of these papers was not widely circulated. In addition, a majority of the papers here have been revised to incorporate further developments since the Workshop at Argonne. I thank the authors of these papers for their additional efforts in updating their papers.