Design of a high-brightness, high-duty factor photocathode electron gun

The proposed UV-FEL user's facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory will require a phatocathode gun capable of producing short (< 6 ps) bunches of electrons at high repetition rates (5 kHz), low energy spread (< 1.5%), a peak current of 300 A (after compression) and a total bunch charge of up to 2 nC. At the highest charge, the normalized transverse emittance should be less than 7π mm mrad. We are presently designing a gun that is expected to exceed these requirements. This gun will consist of 3 1 2 cells, constructed of GlidCop-15, an aluminum oxide dispersion strengthened copper alloy. The gun will be capable of operating at duty factors in excess of 1%. Extensive beam dynamics studies of the gun were used to determine the effect of varying the length of the first cell, shaping the apertures between cells, and increasing the number of cells. In addition, a detailed thermal and mechanical study of the gun was performed to ensure that the thermal stresses were well within the allowable limits and that copper erosion of the water channels would not occur.