Communications & Power Industries LLC (CPI) has received a $6 million to provide power couplers for the European XFEL superconducting linear accelerator. Power couplers, which transmit the electromagnetic energy generated by a high-power microwave source, are critically important components in all superconducting accelerators, as they provide the vacuum and thermal interface between the evacuated superconducting cavity and waveguide components. CPI's power couplers will be used to inject high-power microwave signals into multiple cryogenic cavities that form the European XFEL.
Under this contract, CPI's Beverly Microwave Division will provide an initial quantity of power couplers to the European XFEL over a 12-month period, with the potential for additional power couplers at a later date. Work on the contract will be performed in Beverly, Mass.
Located in Germany, the European XFEL is a new research facility based on a superconducting linear accelerator. The accelerated electrons will be used to generate ultrashort X-ray flashes at a rate of 27,000 times per second with a brilliance a billion times higher than conventional X-ray radiation sources. The interdisciplinary research conducted at the European XFEL is expected to provide valuable insights for many scientific disciplines, including areas of research that have been inaccessible to date, such as mapping the atomic details of viruses, deciphering the molecular composition of cells, taking three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, filming chemical reactions and studying processes like those occurring deep inside planets or in the cradle of star formation.
