Studies on charge production from Cs2Te photocathodes in the PITZ L-band normal conducting radio frequency photo injector

This paper discusses the behavior of electron bunch charge produced in an L-band normal conducting radio frequency cavity (RF gun) from Cs2Te photocathodes illuminated with ps-long UV laser pulses when the laser transverse distribution consists of a flat-top core with Gaussian-like decaying halo. The produced charge shows a linear dependence at low laser pulse energies as expected in the quantum efficiency limited emission regime, while its dependence on laser pulse energy is observed to be much weaker for higher values, due to space charge limited emission. However, direct plug-in of experimental parameters into the space charge tracking code ASTRA yields lower output charge in the space charge limited regime compared to measured values. The rate of increase of the produced charge at high laser pulse energies close to the space charge limited emission regime seems to be proportional to the amount of halo present in the radial laser profile since the charge from the core has saturated already. By utilizing core + halo particle distributions based on measured radial laser profiles, ASTRA simulations and semi-analytical emission models reproduce the behavior of the measured charge for a wide range of RF gun and laser operational parameters within the measurement uncertainties.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, 2 table

Experimental Optimization and Characterization of Electron Beams for Generating IR/THz SASE FEL Radiation with PITZ

The Photo Injector Test facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ), develops high brightness electron sources for modern linac-based Free Electron Lasers (FELs). The PITZ accelerator can also be considered as a suitable machine for the development of an IR/THz source prototype for pump-probe experiments at the European XFEL. One of the interesting options for the IR/THz generation with PITZ is to generate the radiation by means of a SASE FEL using an uncompressed electron beam with bunch length of a few 10 ps and a peak current of ~200 A. In this paper, results of experimental optimizations and characterizations, including transverse phase space, slice transverse emittance and longitudinal phase space, of electron beams with bunch charges of 4 nC are presented and discussed. The measurements were done with beam momenta of 15 MeV/c and 22 MeV/c. Results of IR/THz SASE FEL calculations by using the GENESIS1.3 code based on the measured beam parameters are also presented and discussed

Beam Asymmetry Studies with Quadrupole Field Errors in the PITZ Gun Section.

The Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ) was built to test and optimize high brightness electron sources for Free Electron Lasers (FELs) like FLASH and the European XFEL. Although the beam emittance has been optimized and experimentally demon-strated to meet the requirements of FLASH and XFEL, transverse beam asymmetries, such as wing structures and beam tilts were observed during many years of operation with different generations of guns. These cannot be ex-plained by simulations with the rotationally symmetric gun cavities and symmetric solenoid fields. Based on previous coupler kick, solenoid field imperfection studies and coupling beam dynamics, the beam asymmetries most probably stem from anomalous quadrupole field error in the gun section. A thin lens static quadrupole model is applied in the RF gun section simulations to fit the position and intensity of quadrupole field errors by comparing the beam asymmetry directions in experiments and ASTRA simulations. Furthermore, by measuring the laser position movement at the photocathode and the corre-sponding beam movement at downstream screens, the integrated quadrupole field strength can also be extracted

Latest News on High Average RF Power Operation at PITZ

The Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ) develops, tests and characterizes high brightness electron sources for FLASH and European XFEL. Since these FELs work with superconducting accelerators in pulsed mode, also the corresponding normal-conducting RF gun has to operate with long RF pulses. Generating high beam quality from the photocathode RF gun in addition requires a high accelerating gradient at the cathode. Therefore, the RF gun has to ensure stable and reliable operation at high average RF power, e.g. 6.5 MW peak power in the gun for 650 μs RF pulse length at 10 Hz repetition rate for the European XFEL. Several RF gun setups have been operated towards these goals over the last years. The latest gun setup was brought into the PITZ tunnel on February 10th 2016 and its RF operation started on March 7th. This setup includes RF gun prototype 4.6 with a new cathode contact spring design and an RF input distribution which consists of an in-vacuum coaxial coupler, an in-vacuum T-combiner and 2 RF windows from DESY production. In this contribution we will summarize the experience from the RF conditioning of this setup towards high average RF power and first experience from the operation with photoelectrons

Investigations on Electron Beam Imperfections at PITZ

Since more than a decade, the photo injector test facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ), has developed and optimized high brightness electron sources for modern Free Electros Lasers like FLASH and the European XFEL. Despite a very high performance of the photo injector was experimentally demonstrated, several discrepancies between measurements and beam dynamics simulations have been revealed. Although the optimized measured values of the projected transverse emittance are close to those obtained from the beam dynamics simulations, the corresponding experimental machine parameters show certain systematic deviations from the simulated optimized setup. As a source for these deviations, electron beam imperfections were experimentally investigated. This includes studies on bunch charge production, electron beam imaging using the RF gun with its solenoid, and investigations on the transverse asymmetry of the electron beam generated in a rotationally symmetric gun cavity. Experimental studies were supplied with corresponding beam dynamics simulations. The paper reports on results of these studies

Latest News on High Average RF Power Operation at PITZ

The Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ) develops, tests and characterizes high brightness electron sources for FLASH and European XFEL. Since these FELs work with superconducting accelerators in pulsed mode, also the corresponding normal-conducting RF gun has to operate with long RF pulses. Generating high beam quality from the photocathode RF gun in addition requires a high accelerating gradient at the cathode. Therefore, the RF gun has to ensure stable and reliable operation at high average RF power, e.g. 6.5 MW peak power in the gun for 650 μs RF pulse length at 10 Hz repetition rate for the European XFEL. Several RF gun setups have been operated towards these goals over the last years. The latest gun setup was brought into the PITZ tunnel on February 10th 2016 and its RF operation started on March 7th. This setup includes RF gun prototype 4.6 with a new cathode contact spring design and an RF input distribution which consists of an in-vacuum coaxial coupler, an in-vacuum T-combiner and 2 RF windows from DESY production. In this contribution we will summarize the experience from the RF conditioning of this setup towards high average RF power and first experience from the operation with photoelectrons

Investigations on Electron Beam Imperfections at PITZ

Since more than a decade, the photo injector test facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ), has developed and optimized high brightness electron sources for modern Free Electros Lasers like FLASH and the European XFEL. Despite a very high performance of the photo injector was experimentally demonstrated, several discrepancies between measurements and beam dynamics simulations have been revealed. Although the optimized measured values of the projected transverse emittance are close to those obtained from the beam dynamics simulations, the corresponding experimental machine parameters show certain systematic deviations from the simulated optimized setup. As a source for these deviations, electron beam imperfections were experimentally investigated. This includes studies on bunch charge production, electron beam imaging using the RF gun with its solenoid, and investigations on the transverse asymmetry of the electron beam generated in a rotationally symmetric gun cavity. Experimental studies were supplied with corresponding beam dynamics simulations. The paper reports on results of these studies

Transverse beam matching under the influence of space charge

The matching of a particle beam to specific transverse parameters, imposed by various operational, functional and diagnostic reasons, is an essential procedure in most types of accelerators. While well-established methods can easily match beams of negligible self fields, their accuracy is significantly reduced in the presence of strong space-charge forces. In a pursuit of time-efficient matching solutions for space-charge influenced beams, two approaches are demonstrated in this paper: a faster and more approximative one for symmetric beam transport along periodic and dense lattices, and a more analytic one for broader beam and lattice conditions. Beam dynamics simulations and experimental measurements are used to validate the performance of the suggested methods for the matching requirements of the transverse phase–space tomography at the Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ)