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Providing simultaneously autotrophic and heterotrophic carbon sources is a promising strategy to overcome the limits of autotrophic syngas fermentations. D-xylose and L-arabinose are particularly interesting as they can be obtained by the hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass. The individual conversion of varying initial concentrations of these pentoses and D-fructose as reference was studied with C. autoethanogenum in fully controlled stirred-tank reactors with a continuous syngas supply. All mixotrophic batch processes showed increased biomass and product formation compared to an autotrophic reference process. Simultaneous CO and D-xylose or L-arabinose conversion was observed in contrast to D-fructose. In the mixotrophic batch processes with L-arabinose or D-xylose, the simultaneous CO and sugar conversion resulted in high final alcohol-to-acid ratios of up to 58 g g−1. L-arabinose was superior as a mixotrophic carbon source because biomass and alcohol concentrations (ethanol and 2,3-butanediol) were highest, and significant amounts of meso-2,3-butanediol (>1 g L−1) in addition to D-2,3-butanediol (>2 g L−1) were solely produced with L-arabinose. Furthermore, C. autoethanogenum could not produce meso-2,3 butanediol under purely heterotrophic conditions. The mixotrophic production of meso-2,3-butanediol from L-arabinose and syngas, both available from residual lignocellulosic biomass, is very promising for use as a monomer for bio-based polyurethanes or as an antiseptic agent.

The high peak current of the electron beam was found to be the key parameter for the THz SASE FEL at the Photo Injector Test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ). A multipurpose bunch compressor was implemented at PITZ to expand the parameter space of proof-of-principle studies on the tunable high-power accelerator-based THz source for pump-probe experiments at the European XFEL. The magnetic chicane, consisting of four rectangular dipole magnets, is designed with a bending angle of 19 degrees, due to limited space in the PITZ original beamline, to compress electron bunches with a beam momentum of 15–20 MeV/c and a charge up to 2 nC. The space charge effect and coherent synchrotron radiation are expected to drastically affect the bunch compressor performance for these parameters, thereby challenging the beam transport throughout the bunch compressor. A staged commissioning strategy was developed in order to achieve optimum bunch compressor operation. The first commissioning procedure establishes electron beam transport throughout the reference path and provides minimum beam momentum dispersion after the bunch compressor. This procedure yielded correlations between dipole magnet currents. As a result, the first bunch compression experiments were performed.

Due to their excellent photoemissive properties, especially low thermal emittance and high sensitivity in the green wavelength, multi-alkali antimonide photocathodes, in particular, cesium–potassium–antimonide, emerged as prominent photoemissive materials for the electron sources of high-repetition-rate FEL applications. To explore its feasibility of operating in a high-gradient RF gun, DESY collaborated with INFN LASA to develop multi-alkali photocathode materials. In this report, we describe the recipe of K-Cs-Sb photocathodes, which were grown on a Mo substrate by varying the foundational Sb layer thickness using sequential deposition techniques. This report also illustrates the information regarding the film thickness, substrate temperature, deposition rate, and its possible effects on the photocathode’s properties. In addition, the influence of temperature on the cathode degradation is also summarized. Furthermore, in the framework of density functional theory (DFT), we investigated the electronic and optical properties of the K2CsSb material. The optical properties, such as dielectric function, reflectivity, refracting index, and extinction coefficient, were evaluated. The correlation between the calculated and measured optical properties, such as reflectivity, provides a better and more efficient strategy to rationalize and understand the photoemissive material’s properties.

Photoinjectors are the main high brightness electron sources for x-ray free electron lasers (XFELs). Photoinjector emittance reduction is one of the key knobs for improving XFEL lasing, so precise emittance measurement is critical. It is well known that rms emittance is very sensitive to low intensity tails of particle distributions in the phase space, whose measurement depends on the signal to noise ratio and image processing procedures. Such sensitivities make the interpretations of beam transverse brightness challenging, leading to different emittance definitions to reduce the impact of tail particles. In this paper, transverse phase space is analyzed in action and phase coordinates for both analytical models and experiments, which gives a more intuitive way to calculate the beam core brightness.

Synthesis gas fermentation is a microbial process, which uses anaerobic bacteria to convert CO-rich gases to organic acids and alcohols and thus presents a promising technology for the sustainable production of fuels and platform chemicals from renewable sources. Clostridium carboxidivorans and Clostridium autoethanogenum are two acetogenic bacteria, which have shown their high potential for these processes by their high tolerance toward CO and in the production of industrially relevant products such as ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-hexanol, and 2,3-butanediol. A promising approach is the coupling of gasification of biogenic residues with a syngas fermentation process. This study investigated batch processes with C. carboxidivorans and C. autoethanogenum in fully controlled stirred-tank bioreactors and continuous gassing with biogenic syngas produced by an autothermal entrained flow gasifier on a pilot scale >1200 °C. They were then compared to the results of artificial gas mixtures of pure gases. Because the biogenic syngas contained 2459 ppm O2 from the bottling process after gasification of torrefied wood and subsequent syngas cleaning for reducing CH4, NH3, H2S, NOX, and HCN concentrations, the oxygen in the syngas was reduced to 259 ppm O2 with a Pd catalyst before entering the bioreactor. The batch process performance of C. carboxidivorans in a stirred-tank bioreactor with continuous gassing of purified biogenic syngas was identical to an artificial syngas mixture of the pure gases CO, CO2, H2, and N2 within the estimation error. The alcohol production by C. autoethanogenum was even improved with the purified biogenic syngas compared to reference batch processes with the corresponding artificial syngas mixture. Both acetogens have proven their potential for successful fermentation processes with biogenic syngas, but full carbon conversion to ethanol is challenging with the investigated biogenic syngas.

Slice energy spread is one of the key parameters in free electron laser optimizations, but its accurate measurement is not straightforward. Two recent studies from high energy (≥100 MeV) photoinjectors at SwissFEL and European x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) have reported much higher slice energy spread than expected at their XFEL working points (200–250 pC). In this paper, a new method for measuring slice energy spread at lower beam energy (∼20 MeV) is proposed and demonstrated at the PhotoInjector Test facility at DESY Zeuthen, and the results for 250 pC are much lower than those measured at high energy injectors.

The next generation of accelerator based scientific facilities, such as the megahertz repetition rate free electron laser and electron-ion collider, relies on photoelectron sources of high peak and high average brightness. Therefore, photocathodes with both low transverse momentum spread (TMS) and high quantum efficiency (QE) are required. The conventional positive correlation between QE and TMS leads to a tradeoff between peak and average brightness. In this study, a negative correlation between QE and TMS is experimentally observed for the first time on a semiconductor photocathode (Cs_{2}Te). Two models are proposed to explain such an anomalous correlation. One model considers the junction between the semiconductor cathode and the metal substrate in the case of slightly excessive cesium deposition, and the other model considers different Cs-Te composites. Our studies inspire a new way to break the conventional correlation between QE and TMS, and open a new perspective to advance the beam brightness frontiers.

In state of the art photoinjector electron sources, thermal emittance from photoemission dominates the final injector emittance. Therefore, low thermal emittance cathode developments and diagnostics are very important. Conventional thermal emittance measurements for the high gradient gun are time-consuming and thus thermal emittance is not measured as frequently as quantum efficiency during the lifetime of photocathodes, although both are important properties for the photoinjector optimizations. In this paper, a single shot measurement of photoemission transverse momentum, i.e., thermal emittance per rms laser spot size, is proposed for photocathode rf guns. By tuning the gun solenoid focusing, the electrons’ transverse momenta at the cathode are imaged to a downstream screen, which enables a single shot measurement of both the rms value and the detailed spectra of the photoelectrons’ transverse momenta. Both simulations and proof of principle experiments are reported.