Gary Zinkann (Argonne National Laboratory)
Testing of high-capacity Sumitomo cryocooler
Commercially available cryocoolers typically provide about 2 Watts of cooling at 4.5 K. The ANL Physics Division accelerator group has been testing a new two stage Gifford-McMahon/Joule-Thomson (GM-JT) cryocooler from Sumitomo Heavy Industries. In tests at both RadiaBeam and Argonne the measured cooling capacity is approximately 9.5 Watts at 4.5 K. The cryocooler has also been used to condense helium at approximately 4.3 K at a rate of about 0.4 L/hr into a small helium container. We report here on the experimental hardware used to perform these measurements and discuss the data. The device appears to be an excellent complement to new low-loss Nb3Sn cavities under development at ANL and elsewhere. We comment on this application and the outlook for future uses of the device in ATLAS and elsewhere.