Design of a high speed, high resolution thermometry system for 1.5 GHz superconducting radio frequency cavities

Presented in this paper are the description and the test results of a new stationary thermometry system used to map the temperature of the outer surface of 1.5 GHz superconducting single-cell cavities during operation at 1.6 K. The system comprises 764 removable carbon thermometers whose signals are multiplexed and scanned by a Macintosh computer. A complete temperature map can be obtained in as little as 0.1 s at a temperature resolution of about 0.2 mK. Alternatively, it has been demonstrated that if the acquisition time is increased to several seconds, then a temperature resolution on the order of 30 μK is possible. To our knowledge, these are the fastest acquisition times so far achieved with L-band cavities at these resolutions.