Evaluation of photocathode emission properties in an electron gun: one-step photoemission from bulk band to vacuum states

Abstract

A one-step photoemission analysis is developed, using the exact one-dimensional quantum solution for transmission over and through a triangular barrier presented by Forbes and Deane (2011 Proc. R. Soc. A 467 2927), to evaluate the emission properties of a photocathode in an electron gun. The analysis, which employs transverse momentum conservation in electron emission, includes the physical attributes (density of states and energy-momentum dispersion) of both the bulk band emission states and the recipient vacuum states in its evaluation of the mean transverse energy and relative quantum efficiency of the emitted electrons.

Keywords

• vacuum density of states
• photoemission
• photocathode physics