Radio-frequency (rf) photoinjectors are used to generate high-brightness electron beams for a wide range of applications. Because of their outstanding beam quality, they are particularly well-suited as sources for X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs). The beam emittance, which is significantly influenced by the intrinsic emittance of the cathode, is fundamental for FELs, since it has a strong impact on the lasing performance and it defines the length and cost of the facility. In this paper we present measurements of the intrinsic emittance as a function of the rf field for a copper photocathode. Our measurements match with the theoretical expectations, showing that the intrinsic emittance can be reduced by decreasing the rf field at the cathode. We obtained normalized intrinsic emittances down to $350\mathrm{nm}/\mathrm{mm}$, the lowest values ever measured in a rf photoinjector.

Preliminary studies of harmonic lasing have shown significant promise as a method to produce radiation at higher photon energies for a given electron energy and for a given undulator. The basic idea is to suppress radiation at the fundamental resonant wavelength, and allow radiation at a specific harmonic to grow exponentially without being driven by nonlinear processes at the fundamental. This has several potential benefits: higher photon energies for the same undulator field, plus significantly more power and smaller bandwidth compared to extracting nonlinear radiation at the harmonic after the fundamental has reached saturation. In this paper, we use beam parameters from the current design of LCLS-II to take a critical look at the challenge of suppressing radiation at the fundamental wavelength and to evaluate how much of an improvement in terms of photon energy reach and brightness can be achieved through harmonic lasing. For undulators with adjustable magnetic fields, a scheme is presented which can delay the onset of saturation at the fundamental wavelength by a factor of 2. Performance characteristics and especially spectral brightness are compared to self-seeded beam lines as an alternative method to reduce bandwidth, as well as with more conventional SASE beam lines.

In this paper, a detailed discussion of the rf-related beam dynamics in rf guns and accelerating cavities is presented. Other rf-gun-related aspects such as space charge and cathode physics are not treated. An effective start phase is introduced in order to yield a better description for the synchronous phase, the energy gain, and the bunch compression factor in gun cavities. Energy spread and longitudinal emittance are treated in a form applicable to guns as well as to accelerating cavities. Discussions on the transverse emittance include the chromatic emittance variation at high emission phases and effects of field asymmetries and combined solenoid-cavity sections.

Inverse Compton scattering of laser photons by ultrarelativistic electron beam provides polarized x- to $\gamma$-ray pulses due to the Doppler blueshifting. Nonlinear electrodynamics in the relativistically intense linearly polarized laser field changes the radiation kinetics established during the Compton interaction. These are due to the induced figure-8 motion, which introduces an overall redshift in the radiation spectrum, with the concomitant emission of higher order harmonics. To experimentally analyze the strong field physics associated with the nonlinear electron-laser interaction, clear modifications to the angular and wavelength distributions of x rays are observed. The relativistic photon wave field is provided by the ps ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ laser of peak normalized vector potential of $0.5<a_L<0.7$, which due to the quadratic dependence of the strength of nonlinear phenomena on $a_L$ permits sufficient effects not observed in past 2nd harmonic study with $a_L\approx 0.3$ laser [, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 054802 (2006)]. The angular spectral characteristics are revealed using $K$-, $L$-edge, and high energy attenuation filters. The observation indicates existence of the electrons’ longitudinal motion through frequency redshifting understood as the mass shift effect. Thus, the 3rd harmonic radiation has been observed containing on-axis x-ray component that is directly associated with the induced figure-8 motion. These are further supported by an initial evidence of off-axis 2nd harmonic radiation produced in a circularly polarized laser wave field. Total x-ray photon number per pulse, scattered by 65 MeV electron beam of 0.3 nC, at the interaction point is measured to be approximately ${10}^9$.

While large efforts have been devoted to improving the quality of electron beams from laser plasma accelerators, often to the detriment of the charge, many applications do not require very high quality but high-charge beams. Despite this need, the acceleration of largely charged beams has been barely studied. Here we explore both experimentally and numerically the physics of highly loaded wakefield acceleration. We find that the shape of the electron spectra is strikingly independent of the laser energy, due to the emergence of a saturation effect induced by beamloading. A transition from quasi-Maxwellian spectra at high plasma densities to flatter spectra at lower densities is also found, which is shown to be produced by the wakefield driven by the electron bunch itself after the laser depletion.

Fringe fields in multipole magnets can have a variety of effects on the linear and nonlinear dynamics of particles moving along an accelerator beam line. An accurate model of an accelerator must include realistic models of the magnet fringe fields. Fringe fields for dipoles are well understood and can be modeled at an early stage of accelerator design in such codes as mad8, madx, gpt or elegant. Existing techniques for quadrupole and higher order multipoles rely either on the use of a numerical field map, or on a description of the field in the form of a series expansion about a chosen axis. Usually, it is not until the later stages of a design project that such descriptions (based on magnet modeling or measurement) become available. Furthermore, series expansions rely on the assumption that the beam travels more or less on axis throughout the beam line; but in some types of machines (for example, Fixed Field Alternating Gradients or FFAGs) this is not a good assumption. Furthermore, some tracking codes, such as gpt, use methods for including space charge effects that require fields to vary smoothly and continuously along a beam line: in such cases, realistic fringe field models are of significant importance. In this paper, a method for constructing analytical expressions for multipole fringe fields is presented. Such expressions allow fringe field effects to be included in beam dynamics simulations from the start of an accelerator design project, even before detailed magnet design work has been undertaken. The magnetostatic Maxwell equations are solved analytically and a solution that fits all orders of multipoles is derived. Quadrupole fringe fields are considered in detail as these are the ones that give the strongest effects. The analytic expressions for quadrupole fringe fields are compared with data obtained from numerical modeling codes in two cases: a magnet in the high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider inner triplet, and a magnet in the nonscaling FFAG EMMA. In both examples, the analytical expressions provide a good approximation to the numerical field maps.

The beam energy spread at the entrance of an undulator system is of paramount importance for efficient density modulation in high-gain seeded free-electron lasers (FELs). In this paper, the dependences of high harmonic bunching efficiency in high-gain harmonic generation (HGHG), echo-enabled harmonic generation (EEHG) and phase-merging enhanced harmonic generation (PEHG) schemes on the electron beam energy spread distribution are studied. Theoretical investigations and multidimensional numerical simulations are applied to the cases of uniform and saddle beam energy distributions and compared to a traditional Gaussian distribution. It shows that the uniform and saddle electron energy distributions significantly enhance the bunching performance of HGHG FELs, while they almost have no influence on EEHG and PEHG schemes. A further start-to-end simulation example demonstrated that, with the saddle distribution of sliced beam energy spread controlled by a laser heater, the 30th harmonic can be directly generated by a single-stage HGHG scheme for a soft x-ray FEL facility.

A new low energy beam transport for a multicharge uranium beam will be built at the GSI High Current Injector (HSI). All uranium charge states coming from the new ion source will be injected into GSI heavy ion high current HSI Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ), but only the design ions ${\mathrm{U}}^{4+}$ will be accelerated to the final RFQ energy. A detailed knowledge about injected beam current and emittance for pure design ${\mathrm{U}}^{4+}$ ions is necessary for a proper beam line design commissioning and operation, while measurements are possible only for a full beam including all charge states. Detailed measurements of the beam current and emittance are performed behind the first quadrupole triplet of the beam line. A dedicated algorithm, based on a combination of measurements and the results of advanced beam dynamics simulations, provides for an extraction of beam current and emittance values for only the ${\mathrm{U}}^{4+}$ component of the beam. The proposed methods and obtained results are presented.

The scheme of the x-ray free electron laser based on the optical undulator created by two overlapped transverse laser beams is analyzed. A kinetic theoretical description and an ad hoc numerical model are developed to account for the finite energy spread, angular divergence, and the spectral properties of the electron beam in the optical lattice. The theoretical findings are compared to the results of the one- and three-dimensional numerical modeling with the spectral free electron laser code plares.

The roughness of a photocathode could lead to an additional uncorrelated divergence of the emitted electrons and therefore to an increased thermal emittance. To calculate the emittance growth due to the cathode roughness, people usually choose a simple 2D sinusoidal surface model to avoid mathematical complexity. In this paper, we demonstrate an analytical method, which is inspired by the point spread function that has been widely used in radiation imaging field, to accurately evaluate the emittance growth due to the random roughness of a real-life cathode. Both analytical and numerical studies are performed. Our analytical formulas clearly reveal the relationship between the surface roughness and the emittance growth. Both analytical and numerical results surprisingly show that in the typical 3D random surface case, the influence of the surface roughness on the emittance growth is much smaller than the 2D sinusoidal case with typical roughness properties, however with roughness properties which are matched to the 3D case, the emittance growth conditions in these two cases are very similar. Even with applied electric field strength up to $120\mathrm{MV}/\mathrm{m}$, the total emittance growth is still below 10%. It implies that the large emittance growth (50%–100%) observed on metallic cathodes in some experiments, which is generally believed to be the result of the electric field on the rough surface, might be due to some other reasons.

We calculate the orbit response coefficients for an arbitrarily coupled storage ring subject to maintaining the orbit length constant due to the presence of a radio-frequency system.

A significant part of the experimental program at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) is dedicated to pbar physics requiring a high number of cooled pbars per hour. The primary proton beam has to be provided by a 70 MeV proton linac followed by two synchrotrons. The new FAIR proton linac will deliver a pulsed proton beam of up to 35 mA of $36\mu \mathrm{s}$ duration at a repetition rate of 4 Hz (maximum). The GSI heavy ion linac (UNILAC) is able to deliver world record uranium beam intensities for injection into the synchrotrons, but it is not suitable for FAIR relevant proton beam operation. In an advanced machine investigation program it could be shown that the UNILAC is able to provide for sufficient high intensities of ${\mathrm{CH}}_3$ beam, cracked (and stripped) in a supersonic nitrogen gas jet into protons and carbon ions. This advanced operational approach will result in up to 3 mA of proton intensity at a maximum beam energy of 20 MeV, $100\mu \mathrm{s}$ pulse duration and a repetition rate of up to 2.7 Hz delivered to the synchrotron SIS18. Recent linac beam measurements will be presented, showing that the UNILAC is able to serve as a proton FAIR injector for the first time, while the performance is limited to 25% of the FAIR requirements.

A collimator located in a magnetic bunch compressor of a linear accelerator driven x-ray free electron laser has many potential applications, such as the removal of horns in the current distribution, the generation of ultrashort beams, and as a diagnostic of the beam slice emittance. Collective effects, however, are a major concern in applying the technique. Systematic measurements of emittance and analysis were performed using a collimator in the first bunch compressor of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). In the nominal, undercompressed configuration using the collimator we find that the $y$ emittance (nonbending plane) is not increased, and the $x$ emittance (in the bending plane) is increased by about 25%, in comparison to the injector emittance. From the analysis we conclude that the parasitic effects associated with this method are dominated by coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR), which causes a “systematic error” for measuring slice emittance at the bending plane using the collimation method. In general, we find good agreement between the measurements and simulations including CSR. However, for overcompressed beams at smaller collimator gaps, an extra emittance increase is found that does not agree with 1D simulations and is not understood.

The 10 MeV accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) Injector I test stand at Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) is a testing facility dedicated to demonstrate one of the two injector design schemes [Injector Scheme-I, which works at 325 MHz], for the ADS project in China. The injector is composed of two parts, the linac part and the beam dump line. The former is designed on the basis of 325 MHz four-vane type copper structure radio frequency quadrupole and superconducting (SC) spoke cavities with $\beta =0.12$. The latter is designed to transport the beam coming out of the SC section of the linac to the beam dump, where the beam transverse profile is fairly enlarged and unformed to simplify the beam target design. The SC section consists of two cryomodules with 14 $\beta =0.12$ Spoke cavities, 14 solenoid and 14 BPMs in total. The first challenge in the physics design comes from the necessary space required for the cryomodule separation where the periodical lattice is destroyed at a relatively lower energy of $\sim 5\mathrm{MeV}$. Another challenge is the beam dump line design, as it will be the first beam dump line being built by using a step field magnet for the transverse beam expansion and uniformity in the world. This paper gives an overview of the physics design study together with the design principles and machine construction considerations. The results of an optimized design, fabrication status and end to end simulations including machine errors are presented.

We identify a new mechanism for generation of the microbunching instability that involves the transverse rather than the longitudinal component of the self-fields. We introduce an analytical model that captures the essential features of the effect and use the model to interpret results from recent LCLS-II design studies.

A novel scheme for a racetrack-shape fixed field induction accelerator (RAFFIA) capable of accelerating extremely heavy cluster ions (giant cluster ions) is described. The key feature of this scheme is rapid induction acceleration by localized induction cells. Triggering the induction voltages provided by the signals from the circulating bunch allows repeated acceleration of extremely heavy cluster ions. The given RAFFIA example is capable of realizing the integrated acceleration voltage of 50 MV per acceleration cycle. Using 90° bending magnets with a reversed field strip and field gradient is crucial for assuring orbit stability in the RAFFIA.

Smith-Purcell radiation is a well-known phenomenon, which provides a noninvasive scheme for diagnostics of charged particle beams and is used as an effective source of electromagnetic waves, e.g., in the orotron, the free electron laser, etc. In this paper we develop the theory of Smith-Purcell radiation (SPR) for the little-investigated case of arbitrary angles between the charged particle trajectories and the rulings of a grating. The effect of conical diffraction arising here changes drastically the space distribution of the radiation. By contrast to the only existing approach, described by Haeberle et al. [Phys. Rev. E 55, 4675 (1997)], which requires difficult numerical calculations, we give a fully analytic theory of SPR. Also, in this paper we present for the first time the theory of x-ray Smith-Purcell radiation. Evanescent waves on the surface are shown to lead to strong enhancement of Smith-Purcell radiation, through a resonant mechanism. The results are important for the description of real divergent high-brightness beams and for the development of novel noninvasive diagnostic schemes based on the Smith-Purcell effect.