Experimental studies of emittance growth and energy spread in a photocathode RF gun

Abstract In this paper we report on a low emittance electron source, based on a photocathode RF gun, a solenoid magnet and a subsequent linac. The dependencies of the beam transverse emittance and relative energy spread with respect to the laser injection phase of the radio-frequency (RF) gun, the RF phase of the linac and the bunch charge were investigated experimentally. It was found that a lower beam emittance is observed when the laser injection phase in the RF gun is low. The emittance increases almost linearly with the bunch charge under a constant solenoid magnetic field. The corrected relative energy spread of the beam is not strongly dependent on the bunch charge. Finally, an optimal normalized rms transverse emittance of 1.91±0.28 πmm mrad at a bunch charge of 0.6 nC was obtained when the RF gun was driven by a picosecond Nd:YAG laser. A corrected relative rms energy spread of 0.2–0.25% at a bunch charge of 0.3– 2 nC was obtained after the beam was accelerated to 14 MeV by the subsequent linac.