Search Results (4 total)

Electron injectors delivering relativistic electron beams with very high brightness are essential for a number of current and proposed electron accelerator applications. These high brightness beams are generally produced from photoemission cathodes. We formulate a limit on the electron beam brightness from such cathodes set by the transverse thermal energy of the electrons leaving the photocathode and the accelerating field at the cathode. Two specific examples—direct measurement of the transverse phase space of a space charge dominated beam from a high-voltage photoemission electron gun and a numerical optimization of the same at a higher gun voltage—illustrate the importance of this limit.

We present a comparison between space charge calculations and direct measurements of the transverse phase space of space charge dominated electron bunches from a high voltage dc photoemission gun followed by an emittance compensation solenoid magnet. The measurements were performed using a double-slit emittance measurement system over a range of bunch charge and solenoid current values. The data are compared with detailed simulations using the 3D space charge codes GPT and Parmela3D. The initial particle distributions were generated from measured transverse and temporal laser beam profiles at the photocathode. The beam brightness as a function of beam fraction is calculated for the measured phase space maps and found to approach within a factor of 2 the theoretical maximum set by the thermal energy and the accelerating field at the photocathode.

To achieve the lowest emittance electron bunches from photoemission electron guns, it is essential to limit the uncorrelated emittance growth due to space charge forces acting on the bunch in the vicinity of the photocathode through appropriate temporal shaping of the optical pulses illuminating the photocathode. We present measurements of the temporal profile of electron bunches from a bulk crystal GaAs photocathode illuminated with 520 nm wavelength pulses from a frequency-doubled Yb-fiber laser. A transverse deflecting rf cavity was used to make these measurements. The measured laser pulse temporal profile and the corresponding electron beam temporal profile have about 30 ps FWHM duration, with rise and fall times of a few ps. GaAs illuminated by 520 nm optical pulses is a prompt emitter within our measurement uncertainty of ∼1  ps rms. Combined with the low thermal emittance of negative electron affinity photocathodes, GaAs is a very suitable photocathode for high-brightness photoinjectors. We also report measurements of the photoemission response time for GaAsP, which show a strong dependence on the quantum efficiency of the photocathode.

Substantially more than half of the electromagnetic nuclear physics experiments conducted at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Laboratory) require highly polarized electron beams, often at high average current. Spin-polarized electrons are produced by photoemission from various GaAs-based semiconductor photocathodes, using circularly polarized laser light with photon energy slightly larger than the semiconductor band gap. The photocathodes are prepared by activation of the clean semiconductor surface to negative electron affinity using cesium and oxidation. Historically, in many laboratories worldwide, these photocathodes have had short operational lifetimes at high average current, and have often deteriorated fairly quickly in ultrahigh vacuum even without electron beam delivery. At Jefferson Lab, we have developed a polarized electron source in which the photocathodes degrade exceptionally slowly without electron emission, and in which ion back bombardment is the predominant mechanism limiting the operational lifetime of the cathodes during electron emission. We have reproducibly obtained cathode 1/e dark lifetimes over two years, and 1/e charge density and charge lifetimes during electron beam delivery of over 2×10⁵   C/cm² and 200 C, respectively. This source is able to support uninterrupted high average current polarized beam delivery to three experimental halls simultaneously for many months at a time. Many of the techniques we report here are directly applicable to the development of GaAs photoemission electron guns to deliver high average current, high brightness unpolarized beams.