A new operating mode has been developed for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in which we shape the longitudinal phase space of the electron beam. This mode of operation is realized using a horizontal collimator located in the middle of the first bunch compressor to truncate the head and tail of the beam. With this method, the electron beam longitudinal phase space and current profile are reshaped, and improvement in lasing performance can be realized. We present experimental studies at the LCLS of the beam shaping effects on the free-electron laser performance.

We compare the volume reflection angles measured for protons and electrons over a wide energy range from 1 to 400 GeV in Si and Ge bent crystals at PNPI, IHEP, SLAC, and CERN with the predictions of FLUX and CATCH simulation codes based on binary collisions (FLUX) and continuum model (CATCH). We show good consistency of the data taken by many experimental groups, in good agreement with earlier published predictions.

Current modulations, current spikes, and current horns, are observed in a range of accelerator physics applications including strong bunch compression in Free Electron Lasers and linear colliders, trains of microbunching for terahertz radiation, microbunching instability and many others. This paper considers the fundamental mechanism that drives intense current modulations in dispersive regions, beyond the common explanation of nonlinear and higher-order effects. Under certain conditions, neighboring electron trajectories merge to form caustics, and often result in characteristic current spikes. Caustic lines and surfaces are regions of maximum electron density, and are witnessed in accelerator physics as folds in phase space of accelerated bunches. We identify the caustic phenomenon resulting in cusplike current profiles and derive an expression which describes the conditions needed for particle-bunch caustic formation in dispersive regions. The caustic expression not only reveals the conditions necessary for caustics to form but also where in longitudinal space the caustics will form. Particle-tracking simulations are used to verify these findings. We discuss the broader implications of this work including how to utilize the caustic expression for manipulation of the longitudinal phase space to achieve a desired current profile shape.

The femtosecond photoemission yield from a copper cathode and the emittance of the created electron beams has been studied in a $12\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{m}$, 100 keV dc electron gun over a wide range of laser fluence, from the linear photoemission regime until the onset of image charge limitations and cathode damaging. The measured photoemission curves can be described well with available theory which includes the Schottky effect, second-order photoemission, and image charge limitation. The second-order photoemission can be explained by thermally assisted one-photon photoemission (1PPE) and by above-threshold two-photon photoemission (2PPE). Measurements with a fresh cathode suggest that the 2PPE process is dominant. The beam emittance has been measured for the entire range of initial surface charge densities as well. The emittance measurements of space-charge dominated beams can be described well by an envelope equation with generalized perveance. The dc gun produces 0.1 pC bunches with 25 nm rms normalized emittance, corresponding to a normalized brightness usually associated with rf photoguns. In this experimental study the limits of femtosecond photoemission from a copper cathode have been explored and analyzed in great detail, resulting in improved understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

We develop a configuration of radio-frequency (rf) cavities to dramatically improve the performance of slip stacking. Slip stacking is an accumulation technique used at Fermilab to nearly double proton intensity by maintaining two beams of different momenta in the same storage ring. The two particle beams are longitudinally focused in the Recycler by two 53 MHz 100 kV rf cavities with a small frequency difference between them. We propose an additional 106 MHz 20 kV rf cavity with a frequency at the double the average of the upper and lower main rf frequencies. We show the harmonic rf cavity cancels out the resonances generated between the two main rf cavities and we derive the relationship between the harmonic rf voltage and the main rf voltage. We find the area factors that can be used to calculate the available phase space area for any set of beam parameters without individual simulation. We establish Booster beam quality requirements to achieve 99% slip stacking efficiency. We measure the longitudinal distribution of the Booster beam and use it to generate a realistic beam model for slip stacking simulation. We demonstrate that the harmonic rf cavity can not only reduce particle loss during slip stacking, but also reduce the final longitudinal emittance.

We have investigated the viability of using plasmas formed by ionization of high Z, low ionization potential element rubidium (Rb) for beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration. The Rb vapor column confined by argon (Ar) buffer gas was used to reduce the expected limitation on the beam propagation length due to head erosion that was observed previously when a lower Z but higher ionization potential lithium vapor was used. However, injection of electrons into the wakefield due to ionization of Ar buffer gas and nonuniform ionization of ${\mathrm{Rb}}^{1+}$ to ${\mathrm{Rb}}^{2+}$ was a possible concern. In this paper we describe experimental results and the supporting simulations which indicate that such ionization of Ar and ${\mathrm{Rb}}^{1+}$ in the presence of combined fields of the beam and the wakefield inside the wake does indeed occur. Some of this charge accumulates in the accelerating region of the wake leading to the reduction of the electric field—an effect known as beam loading. The beam-loading effect is quantified by determining the average transformer ratio $⟨R⟩$ which is the maximum energy gained divided by the maximum energy lost by the electrons in the bunch used to produce the wake. $⟨R⟩$ is shown to depend on the propagation length and the quantity of the accumulated charge, indicating that the distributed injection of secondary Rb electrons is the main cause of beam loading in this experiment. The average transformer ratio is reduced from 1.5 to less than 1 as the excess charge from secondary ionization increased from 100 to 700 pC. The simulations show that while the decelerating field remains constant, the accelerating field is reduced from its unloaded value of 82 to $46\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{m}$ due to this distributed injection of dark current into the wake.

Elliptic cavities at medium- and high-$\beta$ range are receiving broader use in the particle accelerator applications. Optimizing the shape of these cavities is a complex and demanding process. In this paper we propose an optimization approach to minimize the ratio of peak magnetic field to the acceleration field $H_{\text{pk}}/E_{\text{acc}}$ while keeping the ratio of peak surface electric field to the accelerating field $E_{\text{pk}}/E_{\mathrm{acc}}$, aperture radius and wall slope angle $\alpha$ at some permitted values. We show that it is possible to substantially vary the cavity geometry without violating the constraints or deteriorating the objective of the optimization. This gives us freedom in designing the geometry to overcome problems such as multipactor while maintaining the minimal $H_{\text{pk}}/E_{\mathrm{acc}}$. The optimization is then performed to find a set of optimized geometries with minimum $H_{\text{pk}}/E_{\mathrm{acc}}$ for different $\beta$’s ranging from 0.4 to 1, different peak surface electric fields, wall slope angles and aperture radii. These data could be generally used as a suitable starting point in designing elliptic cavities.

An analytical expression of the low-frequency quadrupole impedance for undulators and wigglers is derived and benchmarked against beam-based impedance measurements done at the 3 GeV NSLS-II storage ring. The adopted theoretical model, valid for an arbitrary number of electromagnetic layers with parallel geometry, allows to calculate the quadrupole impedance for arbitrary values of the magnetic permeability ${\mu }_r$. In the comparison of the analytical results with the measurements for variable magnet gaps, two limit cases of the permeability have been studied: the case of perfect magnets (${\mu }_r\to \infty$), and the case in which the magnets are fully saturated (${\mu }_r=1$).

The use of resonant depolarization has been suggested for precise beam energy measurements (better than 100 keV) in the $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Future Circular Collider (FCC-$e^{+}{e}^{-}$) for $Z$ and $WW$ physics at 45 and 80 GeV beam energy respectively. Longitudinal beam polarization would benefit the $Z$ peak physics program; however it is not essential and therefore it will be not investigated here. In this paper the possibility of self-polarized leptons is considered. Preliminary results of simulations in presence of quadrupole misalignments and beam position monitors (BPMs) errors for a simplified FCC-$e^{+}{e}^{-}$ ring are presented.

High-average-current, high-brightness electron sources have important applications, such as in high-repetition-rate free-electron lasers, or in the electron cooling of hadrons. Bialkali photocathodes are promising high-quantum-efficiency (QE) cathode materials, while superconducting rf (SRF) electron guns offer continuous-mode operation at high acceleration, as is needed for high-brightness electron sources. Thus, we must have a comprehensive understanding of the performance of bialkali photocathode at cryogenic temperatures when they are to be used in SRF guns. To remove the heat produced by the radio-frequency field in these guns, the cathode should be cooled to cryogenic temperatures. We recorded an 80% reduction of the QE upon cooling the ${\mathrm{K}}_2\mathrm{CsSb}$ cathode from room temperature down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen in Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)’s 704 MHz SRF gun. We conducted several experiments to identify the underlying mechanism in this reduction. The change in the spectral response of the bialkali photocathode, when cooled from room temperature (300 K) to 166 K, suggests that a change in the ionization energy (defined as the energy gap from the top of the valence band to vacuum level) is the main reason for this reduction. We developed an analytical model of the process, based on Spicer’s three-step model. The change in ionization energy, with falling temperature, gives a simplified description of the QE’s temperature dependence. We also developed a 2D Monte Carlo code to simulate photoemission that accounts for the wavelength-dependent photon absorption in the first step, the scattering and diffusion in the second step, and the momentum conservation in the emission step. From this simulation, we established a correlation between ionization energy and reduction in the QE. The simulation yielded results comparable to those from the analytical model. The simulation offers us additional capabilities such as calculation of the intrinsic emittance, the temporal response, and the thickness dependence of the QE for the ${\mathrm{K}}_2\mathrm{CsSb}$ photocathode.

Though wakefield acceleration in crystal channels has been previously proposed, x-ray wakefield acceleration has only recently become a realistic possibility since the invention of the single-cycled optical laser compression technique. We investigate the acceleration due to a wakefield induced by a coherent, ultrashort x-ray pulse guided by a nanoscale channel inside a solid material. By two-dimensional particle-in-cell computer simulations, we show that an acceleration gradient of $\mathrm{TeV}/\mathrm{cm}$ is attainable. This is about 3 orders of magnitude stronger than that of the conventional plasma-based wakefield accelerations, which implies the possibility of an extremely compact scheme to attain ultrahigh energies. In addition to particle acceleration, this scheme can also induce the emission of high energy photons at $\sim O(10–100)\mathrm{MeV}$. Our simulations confirm such high energy photon emissions, which is in contrast with that induced by the optical laser driven wakefield scheme. In addition to this, the significantly improved emittance of the energetic electrons has been discussed.

The High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) aims to achieve an integrated luminosity of $200–300{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ per year, including the contribution from the upgrade of the injector chain. For the HL-LHC the larger crossing angle together with a smaller beta function at the collision point would result in more than 70% luminosity loss due to the incomplete geometric overlap of colliding bunches. To recover head-on collisions at the high-luminosity particle-physics detectors ATLAS and CMS and benefit from the very low ${\beta }^{*}$ provided by the Achromatic Telescopic Squeezing (ATS) optics, a local crab cavity scheme provides transverse kicks to the proton bunches. The tight space constraints at the location of these cavities leads to designs which are axially non-symmetric, giving rise to high order multipoles components of the main deflecting mode and, since these kicks are harmonic in time, we expand them in a series of multipoles in a similar fashion as is done for static field magnets. In this work we calculate, for the first time, the higher order multipoles and their impact on beam dynamics for three different crab cavity prototypes. Different approaches to calculate the multipoles are presented. Furthermore, we perform the first calculation of their impact on the long term stability of the machine using the concept of dynamic aperture.

Depolarization response for a system of two orthogonal snakes at irrational tunes is studied in depth using lattice independent spin integration. In particular we consider the effect of overlapping spin resonances in this system, to understand the impact of phase, tune, relative location and threshold strengths of the spin resonances. These results are benchmarked and compared to two dimensional direct tracking results for the RHIC e-lens lattice and the standard lattice. Finally we consider the effect of longitudinal motion via chromatic scans using direct six dimensional lattice tracking.

We propose a novel scheme to generate a tunable narrow-band THz radiation. In this scheme, a train of laser pulses with THz repetition rate is used to drive a photocathode direct current (DC) gun, leading to the emission of a train of electron bunches. The electron bunch train is subsequently accelerated by the gun field and applied to selectively excite one of the modes in the dielectric loaded waveguide (DLW) structure, which is located downstream the DC gun. Thanks to the tunability of the repetition rate of laser pulses and the gun voltage, a tunable narrow-band THz radiation source can be obtained. This proposed source has the advantages of compactness, robustness and relatively high power.

A nanometer beam size at the interaction point (IP) is required for future linear colliders to achieve the desired rate of particle collisions. KEK Accelerator Test Facility 2 (ATF2), a scaled down implementation of the linear collider beam delivery system, serves for demonstrating the feasibility of the final focus system (FFS). An unprecedented low vertical beam size at the IP of about 40 nm has been already measured in ATF2 using the optics with a nominal ${\beta }_y^{*}$. In our study we decrease the ${\beta }_y^{*}$ value in order to investigate the performance of more chromatic optics and to study the limits of beam focusing at the IP. Stronger beam focusing amplifies the aberrations from the final focus imperfections which cause an increase of the beam size at the IP. Simulations show that the multipolar errors and final doublet fringe fields spoil the IP beam sizes for ultralow ${\beta }_y^{*}$ optics but can be mitigated either by increasing the value of the horizontal ${\beta }^{*}$ or installing a pair of octupole magnets. We report on our first experimental steps towards the ultralow ${\beta }_y^{*}$ in ATF2. New methods for the beam diagnostics at the IP were developed in order to precisely set the desired optics. ${\beta }_y^{*}$ value was half the nominal value. The beam tuning was performed and the measured beam size is compared with the simulation results.

We study propagation of a relativistic electron bunch through a cold plasma assuming that the transverse and longitudinal dimensions of the bunch are much smaller than the plasma collisionless skin depth. Treating the bunch as a point charge and assuming that its charge is small, we derive a simplified system of equations for the plasma electrons and show that, through a simple rescaling of variables, the bunch charge can be eliminated from the equations. The equations demonstrate an ion cavity formed behind the driver. They are solved numerically and the scaling of the cavity parameters with the driver charge is obtained. A numerical solution for the case of a positively charged driver is also found.

We have developed normal-conducting accelerating single-cell cavities with a complete higher-order-mode (HOM) heavily damped structure, into which we feed a 508.9-MHz continuous wave. During a high-gradient test of the second production version of the cavity, we performed a breakdown study based on direct in situ observation of the inner surfaces of the cavity. This paper presents our experimental findings obtained from this observation.