Review of Cryogenics for Large Superconducting Systems

Laurent Tavian
CERN, Accelerator Technology Department,
CERN-AT, Geneva 23, CH 1211, Switzerland
phone: +41 22 767 6959; e-mail: laurent.tavian@cern.ch

Abstract – Cryogenics constitutes key enabling technology of large superconducting systems and plays a major role in the large scientific instrumentation projects. Large cryogenic systems incorporate high-efficiency helium refrigeration (liquefaction) at 4.5 K or below 2 K, a distribution system with low heat-in leaks and a large helium inventory (storage). The technology developed for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under commissioning at CERN has become a reference for the cooling of future large superconducting system, making industrially available new standards for materials, devices, insulation techniques, device cooling methods and cryogenic refrigeration. Index Terms – Cryogenics, Superconducting system, Helium refrigeration.

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Manuscript received October 1, 2007; accepted October 27, 2007; Reference No. CR4; Category 6 and 11.