Search Results (6 total)

Even at a continuous wave facility such as CEBAF at Jefferson Lab, an electron beam with long time intervals (tens of ns) between individual bunches can be useful, for example, to isolate sources of background via time of flight detection or to measure the energy of neutral particles that cannot be separated with a magnetic field. This paper describes a demonstrated method to quickly and easily deliver bunches with repetition rates of 20 to 100 MHz corresponding to time intervals between 50 and 10 ns (respectively). This is accomplished by changing the ON/OFF frequency of the photogun drive laser by a small amount (Δf/f<20%), resulting in a bunch frequency equal to the beat frequency between the radio frequencies of the drive laser and the photoinjector chopper system.

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.

We report new measurements of the parity-violating asymmetry A_PV in elastic scattering of 3 GeV electrons off hydrogen and ⁴He targets with ⟨θ_lab⟩≈6.0°. The ⁴He result is A_PV=(+6.40±0.23(stat)±0.12(syst))×10^-6. The hydrogen result is A_PV=(-1.58±0.12(stat)±0.04(syst))×10^-6. These results significantly improve constraints on the electric and magnetic strange form factors G_E^s and G_M^s. We extract G_E^s=0.002±0.014±0.007 at ⟨Q²⟩=0.077  GeV², and G_E^s+0.09G_M^s=0.007±0.011±0.006 at ⟨Q²⟩=0.109  GeV², providing new limits on the role of strange quarks in the nucleon charge and magnetization distributions.

Light at 1560 nm from a gain-switched fiber-coupled diode laser and ErYb-doped fiber amplifier was frequency doubled to obtain over 2 W average power at 780 nm with ∼40  ps pulses and pulse repetition rate of 499 MHz. This light was used to drive the 100 kV DC high voltage GaAs photoemission gun at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Laboratory to produce a high average current beam (100  μA) of highly spin-polarized electrons (>80%). This new drive-laser system represents a significant advance over laser systems used previously, providing significantly higher power and enhanced reliability.

We have measured the parity-violating electroweak asymmetry in the elastic scattering of polarized electrons from ⁴He at an average scattering angle ⟨θ_lab⟩=5.7° and a four-momentum transfer Q²=0.091  GeV². From these data, for the first time, the strange electric form factor of the nucleon G_E^s can be isolated. The measured asymmetry of A_PV=(6.72±0.84_(stat)±0.21_(syst))×10^-6 yields a value of G_E^s=-0.038±0.042_(stat)±0.010_(syst), consistent with zero.

Strained-layer GaAs and strained-superlattice GaAs photocathodes are used at Jefferson Laboratory to create high average current beams of highly spin-polarized electrons. High electron yield, or quantum efficiency (QE), is obtained only when the photocathode surface is atomically clean. For years, exposure to atomic hydrogen or deuterium has been the photocathode cleaning technique employed at Jefferson Laboratory. This work demonstrates that atomic hydrogen cleaning is not necessary when precautions are taken to ensure that clean photocathode material from the vendor is not inadvertently dirtied while samples are prepared for installation inside photoemission guns. Moreover, this work demonstrates that QE and beam polarization can be significantly reduced when clean high-polarization photocathode material is exposed to atomic hydrogen from an rf dissociator-style atomic hydrogen source. Surface analysis provides some insight into the mechanisms that degrade QE and polarization due to atomic hydrogen cleaning.