Empirical comparison of high gradient achievement for different metals in DC and pulsed mode

For the SwissFEL project, an advanced high gradient low emittance gun is under development. Reliable operation with an electric field, preferably above 125 MV/m at a 4 mm gap, in the presence of an UV laser beam, has to be achieved in a diode configuration in order to minimize the emittance dilution due to space charge effects. In the first phase, a DC breakdown test stand was used to test different metals with different preparation methods at voltages up to 100 kV. In addition high gradient stability tests were also carried out over several days in order to prove reliable spark-free operation with a minimum dark current. In the second phase, electrodes with selected materials were installed in the 250 ns FWHM, 500 kV electron gun and tested for high gradient breakdown and for quantum efficiency using an ultra-violet laser.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Follow up from FEL 2008 conference (Geyongju Korea 2008) New Title in JVST A (2010) : Vacuum breakdown limit and quantum efficiency obtained for various technical metals using DC and pulsed voltage source

Luminosity Upgrades For The Slc

Recent performance improvements at the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC) have led to a proposal to further increase the luminosity up to a factor of four through a series of modest hardware upgrades. New final focus optics introduced in 1997 combined with permanent magnet octupoles have reduced the contribution to the final beam size due to higher order aberrations. The minimum betas achievable at the IP are presently limited by the increase in detector backgrounds as the beam is focused more strongly. By moving the final quadrupoles closer to the interaction point (IP), one can reduce the synchrotron radiation background while decreasing the IP betas. Other upgrades include increasing the bending radius in the final focus to minimize emittance dilutions due to synchrotron radiation, a fast feedforward from the linac to the final focus to cancel trajectory jitter, and a change in the horizontal damping ring partition number to reduce the emittance of the extracted beam. With these upgrades, t..