The Advanced Photoinjector Experiment (APEX) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is dedicated to the development of a high-brightness high-repetition rate (MHz-class) electron injector for x-ray free-electron laser (FEL) and other applications where high repetition rates and high brightness are simultaneously required. The injector is based on a new concept rf gun utilizing a normal-conducting (NC) cavity resonating in the VHF band at 186 MHz, and operating in continuous wave (cw) mode in conjunction with high quantum efficiency photocathodes capable of delivering the required charge at MHz repetition rates with available laser technology. The APEX activities are staged in three phases. In phase 0, the NC cw gun is built and tested to demonstrate the major milestones to validate the gun design and performance. Also, starting in phase 0 and continuing in phase I, different photocathodes are tested at the gun energy and at full repetition rate for validating candidate materials to operate in a high-repetition rate FEL. In phase II, a room-temperature pulsed linac is added for accelerating the beam at several tens of MeV to reduce space charge effects and allow the measurement of the brightness of the beam from the gun when integrated in an injector scheme. The installation of the phase 0 beam line and the commissioning of the VHF gun are completed, phase I components are under fabrication, and initial design and specification of components and layout for phase II are under way. This paper presents the phase 0 commissioning results with emphasis on the experimental milestones that have successfully demonstrated the APEX gun capability of operating at the required performance.
Currently proposed energy recovery linac and high average power free electron laser projects require electron beam sources that can generate up to ∼ 1 nC bunch charges with less than 1 mm mrad normalized emittance at high repetition rates (greater than ∼ 1 MHz). Proposed sources are based around either high voltage DC or microwave RF guns, each with its particular set of technological limits and system complications. We propose an approach for a gun fully based on mature RF and mechanical technology that greatly diminishes many of such complications. The concepts for such a source as well as the present RF and mechanical design are described. Simulations that demonstrate the beam quality preservation and transport capability of an injector scheme based on such a gun are also presented.
New generation accelerator-based X-ray light sources require high quality beams with high average brightness. Normal conducting L-and S-band photoinjectors are limited in repetition rate and D-C (photo)injectors are limited in field strength at the cathode. We propose a low frequency normal-conducting cavity, operating at 50 to 100 MHz CW, to provide beam bunches of up to the cavity frequency. The photoinjector uses a re-entrant cavity structure, requiring less than 100 kW CW, with a peak wall power density less than 10 W/cm 2 . The cavity will support a vacuum down to 10 picoTorr, with a load-lock mechanism for easy replacement of photocathodes. The photocathode can be embedded in a magnetic field to provide correlations useful for emittance exchange. Beam dynamics simulations indicate that normalized emittances smaller than 1 mm-mrad are possible with gap voltage of 750 kV, with fields up to 20 MV/m at the photocathode, for 1 nanocoulomb charge per bunch after acceleration and emittance compensation. Long-bunch operation (10's of picosecond) is made possible by the low cavity frequency, permitting low bunch current at the 750 kV gap voltage.
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