Design, fabrication, and beam commissioning of a 216.667 MHz continuous-wave photocathode very-high-frequency electron gun

Abstract

Tsinghua University is currently developing a very-high-frequency electron gun that operates in continuous-wave (cw) mode at 216.667 MHz. This gun will serve as the beam source for the Shanghai high repetition rate XFEL and extreme light facility. The cavity profile has been optimized to minimize input power, peak surface electric field, and peak wall power density. The profile optimization also takes into account the suppression of multipacting effect. Additionally, thermal analysis has been performed to guide the design of water cooling channels in coordination with gun mechanical design. The fabrication of the gun has been completed, and the frequency and quality factor measured in cold test are in good agreement with simulation expectations. During high power conditioning, 75 kW cw radio frequency power was successfully fed into the gun, corresponding to a cathode gradient of 27 MV/m and a gun voltage of 780 keV. This operating gradient is currently the highest in the world for room-temperature VHF guns. Under this condition, the maximum dark current collected by the Faraday cup at the gun exit was 376 nA when the strength of the gun solenoid was scanned. To measure and optimize the beam quality, a test beamline was constructed. After preliminary optimization, the 95% projected transverse emittance was 0.161 mm mrad for 10 pC bunches with a bunch length of 0.49 mm rms, 0.429 mm mrad for 50 pC bunches with a bunch length of 1.15 mm rms, and 0.853 mm mrad for 100 pC bunches with a bunch length of 1.44 mm rms.