Transient ponderomotive effects in superconducting cavities

A number of experiments were performed on an installed and operational 5-cell CEBAF cavity to determine the minimum time required to re-establish stable gradient after a cavity window arc trip. Once it was determined that gradient could be re-established within 10 ms by applying constant power RF signal in a voltage controlled oscillator-phase locked loop based system (VCO-PLL), a second experiment was performed to determine if stable gradient could be re-established using a fixed frequency RF system with a simple gradient based closed loop control system. During this test, fluctuations were observed in the cavity forward power signal, the source of which was later determined to be ponderomotive in nature. These ponderomotive induced vibrations were quantified using a cavity resonance monitor and a VCO-PLL RF system. Experimental results, analysis of the resultant klystron power transients, the decay time of the transients, and the implications with respect to fast reset algorithms will be presented.