We present the design and characterisation of a cryogenic window based on an ultra-thin aluminised PET foil at T < 10K, which can withstand a pressure difference larger than 1bar at a leak rate < 1×10−9 mbar⋅ l/s. Its thickness of approximately 1.7 μm makes it transparent to various types of particles over a broad energy range. To optimise the transfer of 100keV antiprotons through the window, we tested the degrading properties of different aluminium coated PET foils of thicknesses between 900nm and 2160nm, concluding that 1760nm foil decelerates antiprotons to an average energy of 5 keV. We have also explicitly studied the permeation as a function of coating thickness and temperature, and have performed extensive thermal and mechanical endurance and stress tests. Our final design integrated into the experiment has an effective open surface consisting of 7 holes with 1 mm diameter and will transmit up to 2.5% of the injected 100keV antiproton beam delivered by the AD/ELENA-facility of CERN.
@article{arxiv.2308.12873,
title = {Ultra thin polymer foil cryogenic window for antiproton deceleration and storage},
author = {B. M. Latacz and B. P. Arndt and J. A. Devlin and S. R. Erlewein and M. Fleck and J. I. Jäger and P. Micke and G. Umbrazunas and E. Wursten and F. Abbass and D. Schweitzer and M. Wiesinger and C. Will and H. Yildiz and K. Blaum and Y. Matsuda and A. Mooser and C. Ospelkaus and C. Smorra and A. Sótér and W. Quint and J. Walz and Y. Yamazaki and S. Ulmer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.12873},
year = {2023}
}