Scattering parameters of the 3.9 GHz accelerating module in a free-electron laser linac: A rigorous comparison between simulations and measurements

This article presents a comparison between measured and simulated scattering parameters in a wide frequency interval for the third harmonic accelerating module ACC39 in the linear accelerator FLASH, located at DESY in Hamburg/Germany. ACC39 is a cryomodule housing four superconducting 3.9 GHz accelerating cavities. Due to the special shape of the cavities (in particular its end cells and the beam pipes) in ACC39, the electromagnetic field in the module is, in many frequency ranges, coupled from one cavity to the next. Therefore, the scattering parameters are determined by the entire string and not solely by the individual cavities. This makes the determination of the scattering properties demanding. As far as the authors can determine, this paper shows for the first time a direct comparison between state-of-the-art simulations and measurements of rf properties of long, complex, and asymmetric structures over a wide frequency band. Taking into account the complexity of the system and various geometrical unknowns, the agreement between experimental measurements and simulations is remarkably good for several distinct measurements, although a variety of effects (e.g. cavity deviations from the ideal shape or interactions with not modeled parts of the structure) is not considered in the computer simulation. After a short introduction, the paper provides detailed descriptions of simulations and experimental measurements performed at the module. In this context, the estimation of the cable properties is discussed as well. As a central part of the article, the comparison between measured and simulated transmission spectra and quality factors is presented. This study represents one of the first detailed comparisons between simulations and measurements for a coupled accelerator cavity system.