Proposed fourth generation light sources using SASE FELs to generate short pulse, coherent, X-rays require demonstration of high brightness electron sources. The Gun Test Facility (GTF) at SLAC was built to test high brightness sources for the proposed Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC. The transverse emittance measurements are made at nearly 30 MeV by measuring the spot size on a YAG screen using the quadrupole scan technique. The emittance was measured to vary from 1 to 3.5 mm-mrad as the charge is increased from 50 to 350 pC using a laser pulse width of 2 ps FWHM. The measurements are in good agreement with simulation results using the LANL version of PARMELA.
Next generation accelerators will require a high current, low emittance beam with a low energy spread. Such accelerators will employ advanced beam conditioning systems such as emittance exchangers to manipulate high brightness beams. One of the goals of the Fermilab A0 photoinjector is to investigate the transverse to longitudinal emittance exchange principle. Coherent synchrotron radiation could limit high current operation of the emittance exchanger. In this paper, we report on the preliminary experimental and simulation study of the coherent synchroton radiation (CSR) in the emittance excha…
We present the results of transverse emittance and longitudinal current profile measurements of high bunch charge (greater than or equal to 100 pC) beams produced in the DC gun-based Cornell Energy Recovery Linac Photoinjector. In particular, we show that the cathode thermal and core beam emittances dominate the final 95% and core emittance measured at 9-9.5 MeV. Additionally, we demonstrate excellent agreement between optimized 3D space charge simulations and measurement, and show that the quality of the transverse laser distribution limits the optimal simulated and measured emittances. These…
We present a clear signature of the Schottky effect in a RF photoinjector using photons with energy lower than the Mg cathode work function. This signature is manifested by the shift in the RF phase angle for the onset of the detection of photoelectrons via single-photon absorption and allows for a reasonable estimate of the field enhancement factor. This is a viable method to generate an electron beam with very low thermal emittance and thus, a high brightness beam.
The generation of a flat electron beam directly from a photoinjector is an attractive alternative to the electron damping ring as envisioned for linear colliders. It also has potential applications to light sources such as the generation of ultra-short x-ray pulses or Smith-Purcell free electron lasers. In this Letter, we report on the experimental generation of a flat-beam with a measured transverse emittance ratio of $100\pm 20.2$ for a bunch charge of $\sim 0.5$ nC; the smaller measured normalized root-mean-square emittance is $\sim 0.4$ $μ$m and is limited by the resolution of our experime…
Reducing the intrinsic emittance of photocathodes is one of the most promising routes to improving the brightness of electron sources. However, when emittance growth occurs during beam transport (for example, due to space-charge), it is possible that this emittance growth overwhelms the contribution of the photocathode and, thus, in this case source emittance improvements are not beneficial. Using multi-objective genetic optimization, we investigate the role intrinsic emittance plays in determining the final emittance of several space-charge dominated photoinjectors, including those for high r…
To make full use of photocathode material and improve its quantum efficiency lifetime, it can be necessary to operate laser away from the cathode center in photoinjectors. In RF guns, the off-axis emitted beam will see a time-dependent RF effect, which would generate a significant growth in transverse emittance. It has been demonstrated that such an emittance growth can be almost completely compensated by orienting the beam on a proper orbit in the downstream RF cavities along the injector. In this paper we analyze in detail the simulation techniques used in reference[1] and the issues associa…
In state of the art photoinjector electron sources, thermal emittance from photoemission dominates the final injector emittance. Therefore, low thermal emittance cathode developments and diagnostics are very important. Conventional thermal emittance measurements for the high gradient gun are time-consuming and thus thermal emittance is not measured as frequently as quantum efficiency during the lifetime of photocathodes, although both are important properties for the photoinjector optimizations. In this paper, a single shot measurement of photoemission transverse momentum, i.e., thermal emitta…
Thermal emittance and quantum efficiency (QE) are key figures of merit of photocathodes, and their uniformity is critical to high-performance photoinjectors. Several QE mapping technologies have been successfully developed; however, there is still a dearth of information on thermal emittance maps. This is because of the extremely time-consuming procedure to gather measurements by scanning a small beam across the cathode with fine steps. To simplify the mapping procedure, and to reduce the time required to take measurements, we propose a new method that requires only a single scan of the soleno…
Photoinjectors are the main high brightness electron sources for X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL). Photoinjector emittance reduction is one of the key knobs for improving XFEL lasing, so precise emittance measurement is critical. It's well known that rms emittance is very sensitive to low intensity tails of particle distributions in the phase space, whose measurement depend on the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and image processing procedures. Such sensitivities make the interpretations of beam transverse brightness challenging, leading to different emittance definitions to reduce the impact of …
The solenoid scan is one of the most common methods for the in-situ measurement of the thermal emittance of a photocathode in an rf photoinjector. The fringe field of the solenoid overlaps with the gun rf field in quite a number of photoinjectors, which makes accurate knowledge of the transfer matrix challenging, thus increases the measurement uncertainty of the thermal emittance. This paper summarizes two methods that have been used to solve the overlap issue and explains their deficiencies. Furthermore, we provide a new method to eliminate the measurement error due to the overlap issue in so…
The possibility of using electron beam phase space manipulations to support a free-electron laser accelerator design optimization has motivated our research. An on-going program demonstrating the exchange of transverse horizontal and longitudinal emittances at the Fermilab A0 photoinjector has benefited recently from the upgrade of several of the key diagnostics stations. Accurate measurements of these properties upstream and downstream of the exchanger beamline are needed. Improvements in the screen resolution term and reduced impact of the optical system's depth-of-focus by using YAG:Ce sing…
We report the results of a recent beam dynamics study, motivated by the need to redesign the LCLS photoinjector, that lead to the discovery of a new effective working point for a split RF photoinjector. We consider the emittance compensation regime of a space charge beam: by increasing the solenoid strength, the emittance evolution shows a double minimum behavior in the drifting region. If the booster is located where the relative emittance maximum and the envelope waist occur, the second emittance minimum can be shifted to the booster exit and frozen at a very low level (0.3 mm-mrad for a 1 n…
Polarized electron beams are now in routine use in particle accelerators for nuclear and high energy physics experiments. These beams are presently produced by dc-biased photoelectron sources combined with rf chopping and bunching systems with inherently high transverse emittances. Low emittances can be produced with an rf gun, but the vacuum environment has until now been considered too harsh to support a negative electron affinity GaAs photocathode. We propose to significantly improve the vacuum conditions by adapting a PWT rf photoinjector to achieve reasonable cathode emission rates and li…
The production of electron bunches with low transverse emittance approaches the thermal emittance of the photocathode as various aberrations are corrected. Recently, the coupled transverse dynamics aberration was theoretically identified as a significant source of emittance growth and a corrector magnet was proposed for its elimination [D.H. Dowell, F. Zhou, and J. Schmerge, PRAB 21, 010101 (2018)]. This aberration arises when the beam acquires an asymmetric distribution that is then rotated with respect to the transverse reference axis thus introducing a correlation in the vertical and horizo…
At the Fermilab A0 photoinjector facility, bunch-length measurements of the laser micropulse and the e-beam micropulse have been done in the past with a fast single-sweep module of the Hamamatsu C5680 streak camera with an intrinsic shot-to-shot trigger jitter of 10-20ps. We have upgraded the camera system with the synchroscan module tuned to 81.25MHz to provide synchronous summing capability with less than 1.5ps FWHM trigger jitter and a phase-locked delay box to provide phase stability of ~1ps over 10s of minutes. These steps allowed us to measure both the UV laser pulse train at 263nm and t…
The heating of the electronic distribution of a copper photocathode due to an intense drive laser pulse is calculated under the two-temperature model using fluences and pulse lengths typical in RF photoinjector operation. Using the finite temperature-extended relations for the photocathode intrinsic emittance and quantum efficiency, the time-dependent emittance growth due to the same photoemission laser pulse is calculated. This laser heating is seen to limit the intrinsic emittance achievable for photoinjectors using short laser pulses and low quantum efficiency metal photocathodes. A pump-pr…
A high-current emittance-compensated RF photoinjector is a key enabling technology for a high-power CW FEL. A preliminary design of a normal-conducting, 2.5-cell pi-mode, 700-MHz CW RF photoinjector that will be built for demonstration purposes, is completed. This photoinjector will be capable of accelerating a 100-mA electron beam (3 nC per bunch at 35 MHz bunch repetition rate) to 2.7 MeV while providing an emittance below 7 mm-mrad at the wiggler. More than 1 MW of RF power will be fed into the photoinjector cavity through two ridge-loaded tapered waveguides. The waveguides are coupled to t…
The recent achievements in the performance of superconducting RF (SRF) photoinjectors have opened a new era in the development of the reliable high-brightness CW electron sources. While the SRF guns become one of the most promising technologies, the compatibility of SRF environment with the complex photocathodes remains on the forefront of the modern accelerator science. The SRF cavities operate at cryogenic temperatures providing the ultra-high vacuum (UHV) environment highly beneficial for the photocathode performance. However, the necessity to keep the photocathodes at room temperature whil…
A technique for production of an electron beam with a high transverse emittance ratio. a "flat" beam, has been proposed by Brinkmann, Derbenev, and Floettmann.[1] The cathode of an RF-laser gun is immersed in a solenoidal magnetic field; as a result the beam emitted from a round laser spot has a net angular momentum. Subsequent passage through a quadrupole channel that has a 90 degree difference in phase advance between the transverse degrees of freedom results in a flat beam. Experimental study is underway at the Fermilab A0 Photoinjector. Thus far, transverse emittance ratios as high as 50 h…
The design of the Linac Coherent Light Source assumes that a low-emittance, 1-nC, 10-ps beam will be available for injection into the 15-GeV linac. The proposed rf photocathode injector that will provide a 150-MeV beam with rms normalized emittances of 1 mm in both the transverse and longitudinal dimensions is based on a 1.6-cell S-band rf gun that is equipped with an emittance compensating solenoid. The booster accelerator is positioned at the beam waist coinciding with the first emittance maximum and is provided with an accelerating gradient of ~25 MeV/m, i.e., the "new working point." The u…
In order to investigate and understand the influence of gun design, cathode preparation and operational parameters on the beam quality it is important to have reliable and accurate beam diagnostics available. The focus of this work was thus to employ the available diagnostic beam line of the current gun demonstrator to characterize the transverse phase space of the beam and measure the emittance at various beam settings and operation conditions. Slit mask and solenoid scanning techniques are applied.
The multiplexing capabilities of superconducting X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) have gained much attention in recent years. The demanding requirements for photon properties from multiple undulator lines necessitate more flexible beam manipulation techniques to achieve the goal of "beam on demand". In this paper, we investigate a multiplexed configuration for the photoinjector of high-repetition-rate FELs that aims to simultaneously provide low-emittance electron beams of different charges. A parallel, multi-objective genetic algorithm is implemented for the photoinjector parameter optimizat…
In this paper, we propose a masked photocathode inside a photoinjector for generating high brightness electron beam. Instead of mounting the photocathode onto an electrode, an electrode with small hole is used as a mask to shield the photocathode from the accelerating vacuum chamber. Using such a masked photocathode will make the replacement of photocathode material easy by rotating the photocathode behind the electrode into the hole. Furthermore, this helps reduce the dark current or secondary electron emission from the photocathode material. The masked photocathode also provides transverse c…
Over the last years, the generation and acceleration of ultra-short, high quality electron beams has attracted more and more interest in accelerator science. Electron bunches with these properties are necessary to operate and test novel diagnostics and advanced high gradient accelerating schemes such as plasma accelerators or dielectric laser accelerators. Furthermore, several medical and industrial applications require high-brightness electron beams. The dedicated R&D facility ARES at DESY will provide such probe beams in the upcoming years. After the setup of the normal-conducting RF photoin…
An experimental program to demonstrate a novel phase space manipulation in which the horizontal and longitudinal emittances of a particle beam are exchanged has been completed at the Fermilab A0 Photoinjector. A new beamline, consisting of a TM110 deflecting mode cavity flanked by two horizontally dispersive doglegs has been installed. We report on the first direct observation of transverse and longitudinal emittance exchange.
A comparison of the two most prominent electron sources of high average current high brightness electron beams, DC and superconducting RF photoemission guns, is carried out using a large-scale multivariate genetic optimizer interfaced with space charge simulation codes. The gun geometry for each case is varied concurrently with laser pulse shape and parameters of the downstream beamline elements of the photoinjector to obtain minimum emittance as a function of bunch charge. Realistic constraints are imposed on maximum field values for the two gun types. The SRF and DC gun emittances and beam e…
The solenoid scan is a widely used method for the in-situ measurement of the thermal emittance in a photocathode gun. The popularity of this method is due to its simplicity and convenience since all rf photocathode guns are equipped with an emittance compensation solenoid. This paper shows that the solenoid scan measurement overestimates the thermal emittance in the ordinary measurement configuration due to a weak quadrupole field (present in either the rf gun or gun solenoid) followed by a rotation in the solenoid. This coupled transverse dynamics aberration introduces a correlation between t…
SHINE, as the first hard x-ray free-electron-laser (FEL) facility in China, is designed to provide high-brightness FEL lasing under high-repetition-rate operation mode. In order to drive x-ray FEL pulses with high qualities, the photoinjector section is deployed to provide the specified electron beam with low transverse emittance and high brightness. Normally the multi-objective optimization algorithm is employed in the injector beam dynamics design. In this paper, the many-objective optimization algorithm NSGA-III is introduced to the injector physical design for optimizing the 4 beam quality…
The operation of Ultrafast Electron Diffractometers (UEDs) and Free-Electron Lasers (FELs) relies on high-brightness electron beams produced by radio-frequency (RF) photocathode guns. The next generation of high-repetition rate UEDs and FELs requires electron beams with a high average brightness. To this end, we introduce a continuous wave RF photocathode gun at 325 MHz with an APEX-like geometry. The gun allows for the production of electron beams with very high both peak and average 5D brightness while having moderate RF power consumption. The gun is operated in blowout regime with an energy…
Ultralow emittance ($\leq20$ nm, normalized) electron beams with $10^5$ electrons per bunch are obtained by tightly focusing an ultrafast ($\sim$ 100 fs) laser pulse on the cathode of a 1.6 cell radiofrequency photoinjector. Taking advantage of the small initial longitudinal emittance, a downstream velocity bunching cavity is used to compress the beam to $<10$ fs rms bunch length. The measurement is performed using a thick high voltage deflecting cavity which is shown to be well-suited to measure ultrashort durations of bunching beams, provided that the beam reaches a ballistic longitudinal fo…
We present the design of a high repetition rate MeV energy ultrafast electron diffraction instrument based on a DC photoelectron gun and an SRF linac with multiple independently controlled accelerating and bunching cavities. The design is based on the existing Cornell photoinjector, which can readily be applied to the presented findings. Using particle tracking simulations in conjunction with multiobjective genetic algorithm optimization, we explore the smallest bunch lengths, emittance, and probe spot sizes achievable. We present results for both stroboscopic conditions (with single electrons…
Recent studies of the performance of radio-frequency (RF) copper cavities operated at cryogenic temperatures have shown a dramatic increase in the maximum achievable surface electric field. We propose to exploit this development to enable a new generation of photoinjectors operated at cryogenic temperatures that may attain, through enhancement of the launch field at the photocathode, a significant increase in five-dimensional electron beam brightness. We present detailed studies of the beam dynamics associated with such a system, by examining an S-band photoinjector operated at 250 MV/m peak e…
Advances in electron beam technology have been central to creating the current generation of x-ray free electron lasers and ultra-fast electron microscopes. These once exotic devices have become essential tools for basic research and applied science. One important beam technology for both is the electron source which, for many of these instruments, is the photocathode gun. The invention of the photocathode gun and the concepts of emittance compensation and beam matching in the presence of space charge and RF forces have made these high-quality beams possible. Achieving even brighter beams requ…
Classical and quantum beam dynamics simulation of the RF photoinjector test bench
ITMO University（ITMO大学）；Joint Institute for Nuclear Research（联合核研究所）；Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, Siberian Branch of RAS（俄罗斯科学院西伯利亚分院布德KER核物理研究所）；Institute of Nuclear Physics（核物理研究所）
In its normal mode of operation the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator Facility uses a high charge (10-100 nC), short pulse (3-5 psec) drive bunch to excite high-gradient accelerating fields in various slow-wave structures. To generate this bunch, we designed a 1.5 cell, L-band, rf photocathode gun with an emittance compensating solenoid to give optimal performance at high-charge; it has recently completed commissioning. More recently, we have begun to investigate the possibility of using this gun in a high-brightness, low-charge operating mode, with charge equal to approximately 1 nC, for high-pre…
Free Electron Lasers driven by Super-Conducting Linacs require the generation, acceleration and transport of trains of bunches with high charge, high repetition rate and low emittance. A numerical model already developed for the modeling of beam dynamics in SC Linacs has been now extended to treat RF guns with proper description of the photocathode bunch generation. The model algorithm is based on a coupled integration of Newton and Maxwell equations under a slowly varying envelope approximation for the time evolution of mode amplitudes in the accelerating structure and an envelope equation de…
We present a detailed study of the six-dimensional phase space of the electron beam produced by the Cornell Energy Recovery Linac Photoinjector, a high-brightness, high repetition rate (1.3 GHz) DC photoemission source designed to drive a hard x-ray energy recovery linac (ERL). A complete simulation model of the injector has been constructed, verified by measurement, and optimized. Both the horizontal and vertical 2D transverse phase spaces, as well as the time-resolved (sliced) horizontal phase space, were simulated and directly measured at the end of the injector for 19 pC and 77 pC bunches …
Thermal emittance measurements of a CsK2Sb photocathode at several laser wavelengths are presented. The emittance is obtained with a solenoid scan technique using a high voltage dc photoemission gun. The thermal emittance is 0.56+/-0.03 mm-mrad/mm(rms) at 532 nm wavelength. The results are compared with a simple photoemission model and found to be in a good agreement.
Collider-quality electron bunches from an all-optical plasma photoinjector
Stony Brook University（石溪大学）；University of California, Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）；University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学）；Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）
Motivated by the emittance requirements for future light sources, we show how longitudinal-transverse correlations can be introduced to create beams with large emittance asymmetry. This concept generalizes a key aspect of a Flat Beam Transform, which introduces initial correlations among the transverse planes, to systems with initial longitudinal-transverse correlations. We present an eigen-emittance formalism to analyze such systems. We illustrate the approach by analyzing an electron beam emitted from a photoinjector utilizing a laser with a tilted pulse front. This approach can be used to d…
Since the introduction of the radio-frequency (rf) photoinjector electron source over thirty years ago, peak performance demands have dictated the use of high accelerating electric fields. With recent strong advances in obtainable field values, attendant increases in beam brightness are expected to be dramatic. In this article, we examine the implementation of very high gradient acceleration in a high frequency, cryogenic rf photoinjector. We discuss in detail the effects of introducing, through an optimized rf cavity shape, rich spatial harmonic content in the accelerating modes in this devic…
To meet requirements of high performance THz-FEL (Free Electron Laser), a compact scheme of FEL injector was proposed. Thermionic cathode was chosen to emit electrons instead of photo-cathode with complex structure and high cost. The effective bunch charge was improved to ~200pC by adopting enhanced EC-ITC (External Cathode Independently Tunable Cells) RF gun to extract micro-bunches, and back bombardment effects were almost eliminated as well. Constant gradient accelerator structures were designed to improve energy to ~14MeV, while focusing system was applied for emittance suppressing and bun…
This note presents optimization results for an injector with a super-conducting gun for the cw operation of the European XFEL, the corresponding start-to-end simulation calculations for the beam transport to the undulators and SASE calculations of the X-ray intensities for the achievable photon energies. The optimizations for an injector with a super-conducting gun are done mainly for an already experimentally shown accelerating gradient of 40 MV/m. Different working points with respect to transverse emittance and bunch length are chosen to see whether the lower transverse emittance of the lon…
Flat beams -- beams with asymmetric transverse emittances -- have important applications in novel light-source concepts, advanced-acceleration schemes and could possibly alleviate the need for damping rings in lepton colliders. Over the last decade, a flat-beam-generation technique based on the conversion of an angular-momentum-dominated beam was proposed and experimentally tested. In this paper we explore the production of compressed flat beams. We especially investigate and optimize the flat-beam transformation for beams with substantial fractional energy spread. We use as a simulation examp…
We report an unusual regime of emittance self-compensation in an electron bunch generated in blow-out mode by a radio-frequency photocathode gun. Simulations clearly show an initial growth and a subsequent self-compensation of projected emittance in a divergent electron bunch originating from the effects of: (i) strong space-charge forces of mirror charges on the cathode, (ii) an energy chirp in the bunch and (iii) substantial re-shaping of the electron bunch. Furthermore, we show analytically and numerically how a complex interplay between these effects leads to emittance self-compensation in…
LAL is now equiped with its own platform for photoinjectors tests and Research and Developement, named PHIL (PHotoInjectors at LAL). This facility has two main purposes: push the limits of the photoinjectors performances working on both the design and the associated technology and provide a low energy (MeV) short pulses (ps) electron beam for the interested users. Another very important goal of this machine will be to provide an opportunity to form accelerator physics students, working in a high technology environment. To achieve this goal a test line was realised equipped with an RF source, m…
We consider a scheme to generate sub-picosecond electron bunch in the photocathode rf gun by improving the acceleration gradient in the gun, suitably tuning the bunch charge, the laser spot size and the acceleration phase, and reducing the growth of transverse emittance by laser shaping. A nondestructive technique is also reported to measure the electron bunch length, by measuring the high-frequency spectrum of wakefield radiation which is caused by the passage of a relativistic electron bunch through a channel surrounded by a dielectric.
The design and performance analysis of DC electron gun for 5045 S-band klystron has been worked out using SLAC beam trajectory program (EGUN) and Computer Simulation Technology Particle Studio (CST-PS), Codes. Specifications of electron gun were focused on beam; current, perveance, size and emittance. Optimized beam; current, perveance, diameter and emittance were 414.00A, 2.00uP, 26.82 mm and 103.10 pi mm mrad, respectively. Furthermore, the optimized characteristic parameters of the gun were also calculated and compared with the simulated and experimental values which were in agreement. Accu…
CW photoinjectors operating at high accelerating gradients promise to revolutionize many areas of science and applications. They can establish the basis for a new generation of monochromatic X-ray free electron lasers, high brightness hadron beams, or a new generation of microchip production. In this letter we report on the record-performing superconducting RF electron gun with $\textrm{CsK}_{2}\textrm{Sb}$ photocathode. The gun is generating high charge electron bunches (up to 10 nC/bunch) and low transverse emittances, while operating for months with a single photocathode. This achievement o…
We present measurement and analyses of longitudinal timing jitter of Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPCII) linear accelerator electron gun. We simulated longitudinal jitter effect of the gun using PARMELA about beam performance including beam profile, average energy, energy spread, longitudinal phase of reference particle and XY emittance. The maximum percentage difference of the beam parameters are calculated to be; 100%, 13.27%, 42.24%, 7.79% and 65.01%, 86.81%, respectively due to which the bunching efficiency is reduced to 54%. The simulation results are in agreement with test and ar…
For the Low Emittance Gun (LEG) project at Paul Scherrer Institute a stable and reliable high voltage pulsed generator was needed in order to study low emittance beams generation and transport. The system had to provide variable asymmetric voltage pulse up to -500 kV with amplitude stability better than 1.2 part per thousand (ppt). The pulse should be applied to the cathode of variable gap accelerating diode providing voltage gradients up to more than 100 MV/m. A broad bandwidth electrical connection to the cathode is necessary in order to deliver fast cathode gating signal. The design of the …
A superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) photo injector is in operation at the electron linac for beams with high brilliance and low emittance (ELBE) radiation center and generates continuous wave (CW) electron beams with high average current and high brightness for user operation since 2018. The speed of emittance measurement at the SRF gun beamline can be increased by improving the slit-scan system, thus the measurement time for one phase space mapping can be shortened from about 15 minutes to 90 seconds. A parallel algorithm and machine learning have been used to reduce the beamlet image noi…
