Measurement of the cavity-loaded quality factor in superconducting radio-frequency systems with mismatched source impedance

The accurate measurement of parameters such as the cavity-loaded quality factor(Q_(L))and half bandwidth(f_(0.5))is essential for monitoring the performance of superconducting radio-frequency cavities.However,the conventional"field decay method"employed to calibrate these values requires the cavity to satisfy a"zero-input"condition.This can be challenging when the source impedance is mismatched and produce nonzero forward signals(V_(f))that significantly affect the measurement accuracy.To address this limitation,we developed a modified version of the"field decay method"based on the cavity differential equation.The proposed approach enables the precise calibration of f_(0.5) even under mismatch conditions.We tested the proposed approach on the SRF cavities of the Chinese Accelerator-Driven System Front-End Demo Superconducting Linac and compared the results with those obtained from a network analyzer.The two sets of results were consistent,indicating the usefulness of the proposed approach.