TESLA is an acronym which stands for
TeV
Energy
Superconducting
Linear
Accelerator.
Within the high energy physics community it is widespread
consensus that an electron-positron linear collider with a
center of mass energy of 500 to 1000 GeV and luminosity
above 10E33 should be considered to provide for top
analyses via tt production and for discovery reach up to a
Higgs mass of more than 350 GeV. Therefore several test
facilities are underway to delop key technologies being
necassary. Small beam emittances, and especially beam sizes
at the interaction point of such a linear collider have to
be achieved with very large average power beams. Thus a
collider linac becomes also most attractive for next
generation synchrotron radiation sources.
One of the approaches to a 500 GeV collider is the usage of
superconducting (s.c.) accelerating structures. The
international TESLA collaboration is following this
approach. A test facility, located at DESY with major
components flowing in from the members of the collaboration,
is trying to establish a well-developed collider design.
The facility includes infrastructure to prove the
feasibility of reliably achieving accelerating gradients
above 15 MV/m in a series production. The TESLA linear
collider would rely on superconducting structures
operating at 1.3 GHz with a gradient of 25 MV/m and an
unloaded quality factor of 5E9 at T=2K.
Beside cavity preparation and testing the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) is
also going to show the successful operation of the in a LINAC test string
assembled accelerating structures. An electron beam will be accelerated
in modules of 8 s.c. cavities each.
Further descriptions of the TTF and its various components can be found
in the TESLA Reports and
in the TTF Linac Conceptual
Design Report.
