Real-time diagnostic for charging and damage of dielectrics in accelerators

We report on the progress made during the initial stage of our research to study charging rate and charge distribution in a thin walled dielectric wakefield accelerator (DWA) from a passing charge bunch and the physics of conductivity and discharge phenomena in dielectric materials useful in accelerator applications. The issue is the role played by the beam halo and intense wakefields in charging the dielectric, possibly leading to undesired deflection of charge bunches and degradation of the dielectric material: the effects that may grow over many pulses, albeit perhaps differently at different repetition rates. During the initial stage of development, a microwave apparatus was built and signal processing was developed to observe time-dependent charging of dielectric surfaces and/or plasmas located on or near the inner surface of a thin-wall hollow dielectric tube. Three frequencies were employed to improve the data handling rate and the signal-to-noise. The test and performance results for a plasma test case are presented; in particular, the performance of the test unit shows capability to detect small changes ~0.1% of a dielectric constant, which would correspond to the scraping-off of only 0.3 nC to the walls of the dielectric liner inside the cavity from the passing charge bunch.