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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Fabrication and Characterization of Superconducting Resonators
Published on: May 21, 2016
A clamp and release system for superconducting magnetic bearings
Fabio Columbro1, Paolo de Bernardis1, Silvia Masi1
1Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Universitá di Roma, and INFN, Sezione di Roma, Italy.
Abstract:
We describe a simple and reliable clamp/release system for the rotor of large superconducting magnetic bearings. The system was developed for a cryogenic half-wave plate spinner for cosmic microwave background polarimetry but can have other applications. The main features of this system are its large rotor mass compliance (∼10 kg); zero power dissipation while holding the rotor and zero power dissipation when the rotor is released; fast (∼40 ms), balanced release and clamp actions, and low power dissipation (∼30 J) on the cold stage during each operation; low cost; and high reliability over a very large number of operation cycles.
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