Photocathode RF Gun Research Articles

Parameters stability of S-Band RF gun cavity due to effects of pulsed RF heating

Abstract Requirements to high performances of modern Free Electron Lasers (FEL) facilities transform to requirements of high stability of their electron injectors, which are typically based on photocathode RF guns. To provide high brightness bunches, gun cavities operate in the injector with high pulsed electric, hence, magnetic fields. The effects, related to a pulsed RF heating, result in the change of resonance frequency and quality factor of the cavity even during few μ s RF pulse that, in turn leads to the amplitude and the phase change of RF oscillations in the gun cavity. Cavity deformations due to pulsed heating are considered and corresponding deviations in the cavity resonance frequency are evaluated. Resulting deviations in the phase and the amplitude of the RF field in the cavity are estimated in dependence on the RF pulse duration.

Commissioning the photoinjector of a gamma-ray light source

The Xian gamma-ray light source (XGLS) is a proposed novel high brightness gamma-ray source based on inverse Compton scattering (ICS) between the high brightness electron and laser beams. The photoinjector of the accelerator is one of the main components that determines the electron beam quality and related gamma-ray parameters [Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams 21, 030701 (2018); 20, 080701 (2017); 8, 100702 (2005)]. In order to reduce the risk of this project, a photoinjector including a laser-driven photocathode rf gun, two S-band tubes, and a diagnostic section was constructed and installed from 2016, serving as a pilot plant for the development of the key technologies for the projects. The injector is designed to deliver high quality electron bunches of typically 500 pC charge and $\ensuremath{\sim}120\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$ energy with low emittance and jitter at 10 Hz repetition. Initial system commissioning with an electron beam was finished in the end of 2017, with a goal of a stable 0.6--0.7 mm mrad emittance in a 500-pC bunch clearly demonstrated. In this paper, we report the experimental results and experience obtained in the commissioning, including rf gun, drive laser system, timing and synchronization system, and beam diagnostics.

Conceptual study and design of A C-band photocathode injector

A C-band photocathode injector composed of a 3.6-cell C-band photocathode RF gun and two 1.8-m C-band accelerating structures is proposed. The injector is a low emittance electron source for free electron lasers (FEL) and other compact light sources. The RF structure of the cavities is designed with 2D SUPERFISH simulation. The beam dynamic study in ASTRA helps rectify the 2D RF simulation. To feed the cavities, a design of extracoaxial coupler with RF gun structure is presented. With compact focusing solenoids, for 0.25 nC bunch charge, the final energy can reach 6.9 MeV energy and the 95% emittance can be as low as 0.23 mm mrad (95%). All the details of RF design and beam dynamics studies are presented in this paper, and the design satisfied the requirements of FEL and other applications.

Overestimation of thermal emittance in solenoid scans due to coupled transverse motion

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 the beam's horizontal and vertical motion leading to an increase in the measured 2D transverse emittance, thus the overestimation of the thermal emittance. This effect was systematically studied using both analytic expressions and numerical simulations. These studies were experimentally verified using an L-band 1.6-cell rf photocathode gun with a cesium telluride cathode, which shows a thermal emittance overestimation of 35% with a rms laser spot size of 2.7 mm. The paper concludes by showing that the accuracy of the solenoid scan can be improved by using a quadrupole magnet corrector, consisting of a pair of normal and skew quadrupole magnets.

Design and simulation of a LINAC for high energy electron radiography research

We designed an electron linear accelerator (LINAC) for High Energy Electron Radiography (HEER) studies, which consists of two different guns, either a thermionic cathode or a photocathode RF gun, for diagnosing different targets. In this paper, we present the simulation studies and optimization of the LINAC based on an S-band thermionic RF gun. The LINAC is capable of generating sub-picosecond electron pulses with low energy spread (0.13%) and large micro-bunch charge (143 pC). The beam dynamics of the LINAC is studied and optimized by different beam dynamics simulation codes. The entrance hole induced field distortion in the alpha magnet is also reported. The space charge effects are studied by the General Particle Tracer (GPT) code. The results showed that the space charge forces had a significant influence on beam dynamics in such a low energy LINAC.

Interleaving lattice for the Argonne Advanced Photon Source linac

To realize and test advanced accelerator concepts and hardware, a beamline is being reconfigured in the Linac Extension Area (LEA) of APS linac. A photo-cathode RF gun installed at the beginning of the APS linac will provide a low emittance electron beam into the LEA beamline. The thermionic RF gun beam for the APS storage ring, and the photo-cathode RF gun beam for LEA beamline will be accelerated through the linac in an interleaved fashion. In this paper, the design studies for interleaving lattice realization in APS linac is described with initial experiment result

Submacropulse electron-beam dynamics correlated with higher-order modes in Tesla-type superconducting rf cavities

We report the direct observations of sub-macropulse beam centroid oscillations correlated with higher order modes (HOMs) which were generated by off-axis electron beam steering in TESLA-type superconducting RF cavities. The experiments were performed at the Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology (FAST) facility using its unique configuration of a photocathode rf gun injecting beam into two separated 9-cell cavities in series with corrector magnets and beam position monitors (BPMs) located before, between, and after them. Oscillations of ~100 kHz in the vertical plane and ~380 kHz in the horizontal plane with up to 600-{\mu}m amplitudes were observed in a 3-MHz micropulse repetition rate beam with charges of 100, 300, 500, and 1000 pC/b. However, the effects were much reduced at 100 pC/b. The measurements were based on HOM detector circuitry targeting the first and second dipole passbands, rf BPM bunch-by-bunch array data, imaging cameras, and a framing camera. Calculations reproduced the oscillation frequencies of the phenomena in the vertical case. In principle, these fundamental results may be scaled to cryomodule configurations of major accelerator facilities.

Beam dynamics studies of a 30 MeV RF linac for neutron production

Design of a 30 MeV, 10 Amp RF linac as neutron source has been carried out by means of ASTRA simulation code. Here we discuss details of design simulations for three different cases i.e Thermionic , DC and RF photocathode guns and compare them as injectors to a 30 MeV RF linac for n-ToF production. A detailed study on choice of input parameters of the beam from point of view of transmission efficiency and beam quality at the output have been described. We found that thermionic gun isn't suitable for this application. Both DC and RF photocathode gun can be used. RF photocathode gun would be of better performance.

High peak power THz source for ultrafast electron diffraction

Terahertz (THz) science and technology have already become the research highlight at present. In this paper, we put forward a device setup to carry out ultrafast fundamental research. A photocathode RF gun generates electron bunches with ∼MeV energy, ∼ps bunch width and about 25pC charge. The electron bunches inject the designed wiggler, the coherent radiation at THz spectrum emits from these bunches and increases rapidly until the saturation at ∼MW within a short wiggler. THz pulses can be used as pump to stimulate an ultra-short excitation in some kind of sample. Those electron bunches out of wiggler can be handled into bunches with ∼1pC change, small beam spot and energy spread to be probe. Because the pump and probe comes from the same electron source, synchronization between pump and probe is inherent. The whole facility can be compacted on a tabletop.

Ultraviolet laser transverse profile shaping for improving x-ray free electron laser performance

The photocathode rf gun is one of the most critical components in x-ray free electron lasers. The drive laser strikes the photocathode surface, which emits electrons with properties that depend on the shape of the drive laser. Most free electron lasers use photocathodes with work function in the ultraviolet, a wavelength where direct laser manipulation becomes challenging. In this paper, we present a novel application of a digital micromirror device (DMD) for the 253 nm drive laser at the Linear Coherent Light Source. Laser profile shaping is accomplished through an iterative algorithm that takes into account shaping error and efficiency. Next, we use laser shaping to control the X-ray laser output via an online optimizer, which shows improvement in FEL pulse energy. Lastly, as a preparation for electron beam shaping, we use the DMD to measure the photocathode quantum efficiency across cathode surface with an averaged laser rms spot size of $59\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$. Our experiments demonstrate promising outlook of using DMD to shape ultraviolet lasers for photocathode rf guns with various applications.

Photoinjector optimization using a derivative-free, model-based trust-region algorithm for the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator

Model-based, derivative-free, trust-region algorithms are increasingly popular for optimizing computationally expensive numerical simulations. A strength of such methods is their efficient use of function evaluations. In this paper, we use one such algorithm to optimize the beam dynamics in two cases of interest at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) facility. First, we minimize the emittance of a 1 nC electron bunch produced by the AWA rf photocathode gun by adjusting three parameters: rf gun phase, solenoid strength, and laser radius. The algorithm converges to a set of parameters that yield an emittance of 1.08 μm. Second, we expand the number of optimization parameters to model the complete AWA rf photoinjector (the gun and six accelerating cavities) at 40 nC. The optimization algorithm is used in a Pareto study that compares the trade-off between emittance and bunch length for the AWA 70MeV photoinjector.

A pulse-to-pulse timing jitter measurement between two synchronized amplified laser beams for TTX.

In China, Tsinghua Thomson Scattering X-ray Source (TTX) is the dedicated hard X-ray source based on the Thomson scattering between a terawatt ultrashort laser and a relativistic electron beam. In the TTX, two synchronized Ti: sapphire laser systems generate the terawatt ultrashort infrared scattering laser and the ultraviolet driving laser for the photocathode RF gun to produce the electron beam; measuring the timing jitter between the electron beam and the laser beam is an essential task for the X-ray source. In the present study, we report on a single shot, non-collinear cross correlator with fs resolution and measured the timing jitter between the two synchronized laser systems with a pulse-to-pulse method, which is beneficial to estimate the jitter of the X-ray yield in the TTX system. Although it is more important to synchronize the scattering laser to the electron beam and not of the driving laser, the laser-laser jitter measurement would be a good first step towards that goal, and the result generated can be considered as the error signal for the potential feedback stabilization.

Design of a Low Emittance High Current Photocathode RF Gun for the IPM Linear Accelerator

Design of a Low Emittance High Current Photocathode RF Gun for the IPM Linear Accelerator

Femtosecond precision measurement of laser–rf phase jitter in a photocathode rf gun

We report on the measurement of the laser–rf phase jitter in a photocathode rf gun with femtosecond precision. In this experiment four laser pulses with equal separation are used to produce electron bunch trains; then the laser–rf phase jitter is obtained by measuring the variations of the electron bunch spacing with an rf deflector. Furthermore, we show that when the gun and the deflector are powered by the same rf source, it is possible to obtain the laser–rf phase jitter in the gun through measurement of the beam–rf phase jitter in the deflector. Based on these measurements, we propose an effective time-stamping method that may be applied in MeV ultrafast electron diffraction facilities to enhance the temporal resolution.

Analysis of space charge fields using the Lienard-Wiechert potential and the method of images during the photoemission of the electron beam from the cathode

We present a numerical analysis of the space charge effect and the effect of image charge force on the cathode surface for a laser-driven RF-photocathode gun. In this numerical analysis, in the vicinity of the cathode surface, we used an analytical method based on Lienard-Weichert retarded potentials. The analytical method allows us to calculate longitudinal and radial electric fields, and the azimuth magnetic field due to both space charge effect and the effect of the image charge force. We calculate the electro-magnetic fields in the following two conditions for the “ELSA” photoinjector. The first condition is in the progress of photoemission, which corresponds to the inside of the emitted beam, and the second condition is at the end of the photoemission. The electromagnetic fields due to the space charge effect and the effect of the image charge force, and the sum of them, which corresponds to the global electro-magnetic fields, are shown. Based on these numerical results, we discussed the effects of the space charge and the image charge in the immediate vicinity of the cathode.

InSitu Observation of Dark Current Emission in a High Gradient rf Photocathode Gun.

Undesirable electron field emission (also known as dark current) in high gradient rf photocathode guns deteriorates the quality of the photoemission current and limits the operational gradient. To improve the understanding of dark current emission, a high-resolution (∼100 μm) dark current imaging experiment has been performed in an L-band photocathode gun operating at ∼100 MV/m of surface gradient. Scattered strong emission areas with high current have been observed on the cathode. The field enhancement factor β of selected regions on the cathode has been measured. The postexaminations with scanning electron microscopy and white light interferometry reveal the origins of ∼75% strong emission areas overlap with the spots where rf breakdown has occurred.

Development of S-band photocathode RF guns at Tsinghua University

This study aims to explain the development of S-band photocathode RF guns at Tsinghua University, with especial attention on the progress of guns developed after 2011. Two types of RF guns were developed based on the BNL/SLAC/UCLA gun prior 2011. These guns have been operated as electron sources for Tsinghua Thomson scattering X-ray source (TTX), MeV ultrafast electron diffraction, and Shanghai deep ultraviolet FEL test facility. Based on our operation experiences and other gun modifications worldwide, numerous improvements have been proposed, and seven third-type guns have been designed and fabricated since 2011. Cold tests of all third-type guns have been completed, confirming a significantly improved quality factor and mode separation. The first third-type gun has been installed on TTX and operated for four years, demonstrating high gradient, low dark current, stable quantum efficiency, and small emittances. The optimal transverse emittance was εx=0.56mmmrad, εy=0.66mmmrad for 200pC with a peak current of 25A, and εx=0.78mmmrad, εy=0.92mmmrad for 500pC with a peak current of 62.5A under a 110MV/m gun gradient.

Generating quasi-single-cycle THz pulse from frequency-chirped electron bunch train and a tapered undulator

We propose a proof-of-principle experiment to test a new scheme to produce a single-cycle radiation pulse in free-electron lasers (FELs). Here, a few ${\it\alpha}$ -BBO crystals will be first used to produce an equally spaced laser pulse train. Then, the laser pulse train illuminates the cathode to produce a frequency-chirped electron bunch train in a photocathode rf gun. Finally, the frequency-chirped electron bunch train passes through a tapered undulator to produce a quasi-single-cycle THz pulse. This experiment should allow comparison and confirmation of predictive models and scaling laws, and the preliminary experimental results will also be discussed.

Present Status and Perspectives of Long Wavelength Free Electron Lasers at Kyoto University

A mid-infrared Free Electron Laser (FEL) named as Kyoto University FEL (KU-FEL) has been developed for energy-related research at Institute of Advanced Energy, Kyoto University. The wavelength range of KU-FEL is 3.6 - 23 μm and opened for various user experiments. A compact THz-FEL, which consists of a photocathode RF gun, a bunch compressor, and an undulator, is now under construction. Present status and perspective of the FEL facility at Kyoto University is reported in this paper.

Ultrafast electron diffraction with megahertz MeV electron pulses from a superconducting radio-frequency photoinjector

We report ultrafast relativistic electron diffraction operating at the megahertz repetition rate where the electron beam is produced in a superconducting radio-frequency (rf) photoinjector. We show that the beam quality is sufficiently high to provide clear diffraction patterns from gold and aluminium samples. With the number of electrons, several orders of magnitude higher than that from a normal conducting photocathode rf gun, such high repetition rate ultrafast MeV electron diffraction may open up many new opportunities in ultrafast science.