Superconducting cavities automatic loaded quality factor control at FLASH

The well-established technology of superconducting niobium cavities (TESLA) finds an increasing number of applications for linear accelerators in high-energy physics experiments. Together with cavity design and manufacturing, control systems for accelerating field parameters were developed. The digital control system developed for cryomodule operation at the Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) is able to perform field amplitude and phase regulation with the precision requested for the multiple user experiments carried at FLASH and according to the required laser light parameters. While new experiments (like the International Linear Collider or the proposed European X-FEL upgrades) are based on the same technology (and similar control systems), they require additional levels of controlling superconducting structures parameters in order to comply with tighter power budget overheads and finer field regulation requirements. Consequently, the possibility of controlling such parameters as cavity loaded quality factor or resonance frequency are becoming more attractive. The necessity and the benefits of regulating these parameters has been described in [1] and [2].