Emittance, surface structure, and electron emission

Abstract

The emittance of high brightness electron sources, particularly field emitters and photocathodes but also thermionic sources, is increased by surface roughness on the emitter. Such structure causes local field enhancement and complicates both the prediction of emittance and the underlying emission models on which such predictions depend. In the present work, a method to find the emission trajectories near regions of high field enhancement is given and applied to emittance predictions for field, photo, and thermal emission for an analytically tractable hemispherical model. The dependence of the emittance on current density, spatial variation, and acceleration close to the emission site is identified and the impact of space charge discussed. The methodology is extensible to field emission from close-spaced wirelike structures, in particular, and extensions to that configuration are discussed. The models have application to electron sources for high frequency vacuum electronics, high power microwave devices, and free-electron lasers.