One Nanosecond Pulsed Electron Gun Systems

Abstract

At SLAC there has been a continuous need for the injection of very short bunches of electrons into the accelerator. Several time-of-flight experiments have used bursts of short pulses during a normal 1.6 micro-second rf acceleration period. Single bunch beam loading experiments made use of a short pulse injection system which included high power transverse beam chopping equipment. Until the equipment described in this paper came on line, the basic grid-controlled gun pulse was limited to a rise time of 7 nanoseconds and a pulse width of 10 nanoseconds. The system described here has a grid-controlled rise time of less than 500 pico-seconds, and a minimum pulse width of less than 1 nanosecond. Pulse burst repetition rate has been demonstrated above 20 MHz during a 1.6 microsecond rf accelerating period. The order-of-magnitude increase in gun grid switching speed comes from a new gun design which minimizes lead inductance and stray capacitance, and also increases gun grid transconductance. These gun improvements coupled with a newly designed fast pulser mounted directly within the gun envelope make possible subnanosecond pulsing of the gun.