Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (Jan 2020)

Stable operation of a high-voltage high-current dc photoemission gun for the bunched beam electron cooler in RHIC

  • X. Gu,
  • Z. Altinbas,
  • S. Badea,
  • D. Bruno,
  • L. Cannizzo,
  • M. Costanzo,
  • A. Drees,
  • A. V. Fedotov,
  • W. Fischer,
  • D. Gassner,
  • M. Gaowei,
  • P. Inacker,
  • J. Jamilkowski,
  • D. Kayran,
  • J. Kewisch,
  • C. J. Liaw,
  • C. Liu,
  • M. Mapes,
  • K. Mernick,
  • C. Mi,
  • T. A. Miller,
  • M. Minty,
  • L. Nguyen,
  • V. Ptitsyn,
  • J. Sandberg,
  • V. Schoefer,
  • S. Seletskiy,
  • L. Smart,
  • A. Sukhanov,
  • P. Thieberger,
  • J. Tuozzolo,
  • E. Wang,
  • A. Zaltsman,
  • He Zhao,
  • Zhi Zhao,
  • A. Bartnik,
  • K. Smolenski

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.23.013401
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 1
p. 013401

Abstract

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The Low Energy RHIC electron Cooling (LEReC) project at Brookhaven National Laboratory recently demonstrated for the first time cooling of hadron bunches with radio-frequency (rf) accelerated electron bunches. LEReC uses a high-voltage photoemission electron gun with stringent requirements for beam current, beam quality, and stability. The electron gun has a photocathode with a high-power fiber laser, and a novel cathode production, transport, and exchange system. It has been demonstrated that the high-voltage photoemission gun can continually produce a high-current electron beam with a beam quality suitable for electron cooling. We describe the operational experience with the LEReC dc photoemission gun in RHIC and discuss the important aspects needed to achieve the required beam current, beam quality, and stability.