Measuring ac losses in superconducting cables using a resonant circuit:Resonant current experiment (RESCUE).

A simple way to obtain true ac losses with a resonant circuit containing a superconductor, using the decay of the circuit current, is described. For the measurement a capacitor is short circuited with a superconducting cable. Energy in the circuit is provided by either charging up the capacitors with a certain voltage, or letting a de flow in the superconductor. When the oscillations are started-either by opening a switch in case a de is flowing or by closing a switch to connect the charged capacitors with the superconductor-the current (via a Rogowski coil) or the voltage on the capacitor can be recorded using, for example, a digital oscilloscope. The amplitude decay of the periodic voltage or current accurately reflects the power loss in the system. It consists of two components-an ohmic purely exponential one (from leads, contacts, etc.), and a nonexponential component originating from the superconductor. The method has been successfully applied for the measurement of the ac loss in a 1 m long superconducting cable model.