Design of a compact C-band high brightness photoinjector for an ultra-fast electron diffraction

Abstract

A compact C-band high brightness photoinjector for ultra-fast electron diffraction (UED) is under development at Tsinghua University. The C-band photoinjector, operating at 5.172 GHz, uses a 1.45-cell C-band RF gun as the electron source. The design of the RF gun has addressed the physics, beam dynamics and mechanical aspects, and based on these design studies, a prototype has been fabricated. In order to obtain optimized performance for the UED, beam dynamics simulation has been carried out using the particle tracking code Astra for the photoinjector consisting of an alternative multi-cell RF gun design and a C-band compressor downstream. The beam dynamics parameters that are optimized include the bunch length, peak current, horizontal emittance, and position of the minimum bunch length.