Development of a polarized electron source for the MIT-Bates Linear Accelerator Center

The polarized electron source at MIT-Bates has been developed to provide beams for nuclear physics experiments with a very diverse set of requirements. The source has combined operation at high peak and average current with high polarization. Developments have included the pioneering of several techniques used in parity violating experiments to remove helicity correlations from beam properties. This paper describes the design of the source and its performance during beam operations.