The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility

On February 13, 1987, construction started on the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility - a 4-GeV , a 200-(mu)A, continuous beam, electron accelerator facility designed for nuclear physics research. The machine has a racetrack configuration with two antiparallel, 500-MeV, superconducting linac segments connected by beam lines to allow four passes of recirculation. The accelerating structure consists of 1500-MHz, five-cell niobium cavities developed at Cornell University. A liquid helium cryogenic system cools the cavities to an operating temperature of 2 K. Beam extraction after any three of the four passes allows simultaneous delivery of up to three beams of independently variable currents and different, but correlated, energies to the three experimental areas. Beam breakup thresholds exceed the design current by nearly two orders of magnitude. Project completion and the start of physics operations are scheduled for 1993. The total estimated cost is $255 million.