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Applied physics letters 120, 104102 (2022). doi:10.1063/5.0078927, Electron photoinjectors provide high-brightness electron beams to numerous research applications in physics, chemistry, material, and life sciences. Semiconductor photocathodes are widely used here, as they enable the production of low-emittance beams with variable charge at high repetition rates. One of the key figures of merit of photocathodes is the minimum achievable bunch length. In semiconductor cathodes, this is dominated by scattering effects and varying penetration depths of the extracting photons, which leads to a characteristic electron emission function. We present a method to determine this cathode time response with resolution on the tens of femtoseconds level, breaking the resolution barrier encountered in previous studies. The method is demonstrated with cesium-telluride (Cs$_2$Te) and gold cathodes, revealing response times of (184 �� 41) fs up to (253 �� 58) fs for the semiconductor and an upper limit of (93 �� 17) fs for the metal. Monte Carlo simulations of Cs$_2$Te emission benchmarked to these results give detailed information about the cathode material., Published by American Inst. of Physics, Melville, NY

This work discusses the behavior of electron bunch charge produced in an L-band normal conducting radio frequency gun from Cs 2 Te photocathodes illuminated with ps-long UV laser pulses and presumed homogeneous flattop laser transverse distribution. The measured charge shows the expected linear dependence in the quantum efficiency limited emission regime at low laser pulse energies. At higher laser pulse energy, the measured charge in the space charge limited emission regime should saturate, assuming an ideal homogeneous flattop laser transverse distribution. However, this behavior is not observed experimentally. Instead of saturating, the measured charge continues to increase with laser pulse energy, albeit with much weaker dependence than in the quantum efficiency limited emission regime. Simulations with the space charge particle tracking code ASTRA show that the charge saturates as expected using a homogeneous flattop laser transverse distribution. The discrepancy between simulations and measured excess charge may be attributed to the presence of unintentional Gaussian-like decaying radial halo beyond the core of the otherwise presumed homogeneous flattop core. The rate of increase of the measured charge at high laser pulse energies seems to be proportional to the amount of halo despite charge saturation in the core of the transverse laser radial profile. By utilizing core + halo particle distributions based on measured radial laser profiles, ASTRA simulations and semi-analytical emission models reproduce the behavior of the measured charge for a wide range of RF gun and laser operational parameters within the measurement uncertainties.

The matching of a particle beam to specific transverse parameters, imposed by various operational, functional and diagnostic reasons, is an essential procedure in most types of accelerators. While well-established methods can easily match beams of negligible self fields, their accuracy is significantly reduced in the presence of strong space-charge forces. In a pursuit of time-efficient matching solutions for space-charge influenced beams, two approaches are demonstrated in this paper: a faster and more approximative one for symmetric beam transport along periodic and dense lattices, and a more analytic one for broader beam and lattice conditions. Beam dynamics simulations and experimental measurements are used to validate the performance of the suggested methods for the matching requirements of the transverse phase–space tomography at the Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ).

10th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC'19, Melbourne, Australia, 19 May 2019 - 24 May 2019; Journal of physics / Conference series Conference series [...] 1350, 012036 - (2019). doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1350/1/012036, A free-electron laser based THz source is undergoing design studies at the Photo Injector Test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ). It is considered as a prototype for pump-probe experiments at the European XFEL, benefiting from the fact that the electron beam from the PITZ facility has an identical pulse train structure as the XFEL pulses. In the proposed proof-of-principle experiment, the electron beam (up to 4 nC bunch charge and 200 A peak current) will be accelerated to 16-22 MeV/c to generate SASE radiations in an LCLS-I undulator in the THz range between 60 and 100 pm with an expected energy of up to ~1 mJ/pulse. In this paper, we report our simulations on the optimization of the photo-injector and the design of the transport and matching beamline. Experimental investigations on the generation, characterization and matching of the high charge beam in the existing 22-m-long beamline will also be presented., Published by IOP Publ.20382, Bristol

10th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC’19, Melbourne, Australia, 2 May 2019 - 24 May 2019; Journal of physics / Conference series Conference series [...] 1350, 012046 - (2019). doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1350/1/012046, Laser pulse shaping is one of the key elements to generate low emittance electron beams with RF photoinjectors. Ultimately high performance can be achieved with ellipsoidal laser pulses, but 3-dimensional shaping is challenging. High beam quality can also be reached by simple transverse pulse shaping, which has demonstrated improved beam emittance compared to a transversely uniform laser in the 'pancake' photoemission regime. In this contribution we present the truncation of a Gaussian laser at a radius of approximately one sigma in the intermediate (electron bunch length directly after emission about the same as radius) photoemission regime with high acceleration gradients (up to 60 MV/m). This type of electron bunch is used e.g. at the European XFEL and FLASH free electron lasers at DESY, Hamburg site and is being investigated in detail at the Photoinjector Test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ). Here we present ray-tracing simulations and experimental data of a laser beamline upgrade enabling variable transverse truncation. Initial projected emittance measurements taken with help of this setup are shown, as well as supporting beam dynamics simulations. Additional simulations show the potential for substantial reduction of slice emittance at PITZ., Published by IOP Publ.20382, Bristol

44th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz) : [Proceedings] - IEEE, 2019. - ISBN 978-1-5386-8285-2 - doi:10.1109/IRMMW-THz.2019.8874425 2019 44th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves, IRMMW-THz 2019, Paris, France, 1 Sep 2019 - 6 Sep 2019; IEEE 1 pp. (2019). doi:10.1109/IRMMW-THz.2019.8874425, There is a high demand for intense THz sources since “many excitation mechanisms of matter resonate in the terahertz regime” especially for condensed matters. “Accelerator-based THz sources provide the wide tunability together with high intensity and repetition rates beyond 100 kHz, that will enable broad application at the European XFEL to the most interesting scientific problems in the field” [1]. Supported by European XFEL a proof of principle study is started at the Photo-Injector Test Facility located at DESY in Zeuthen site (PITZ). Since PITZ and European XFEL electron sources are identical the X-ray and THz radiation can be produced with identical bunch train structure so that for every X-ray pulse a corresponding THz pulse can be provided for the pump-and- probe experiments., Published by IEEE

Plasma physics and controlled fusion 61(4), 045012 (2019). doi:10.1088/1361-6587/ab04b9, We present a new method to determine the electron density of a plasma by measuring the periodicity of modulations introduced to the longitudinal phase space of a relativistic particle bunch by the interaction with the plasma via the self-modulation instability. As the modulation is solely depending on the plasma density and the beam parameters, this method allows to determine the time-resolved density of a plasma at the position of beam passage, which is confirmed in particle-in-cell simulations. Densities in the range of 3.6 × 10$^{12}$ cm$^{−3}$ – 7.2 × 10$^{15}$ cm$^{−3}$ have been measured and the measurement accuracy is confirmed by comparison to spectroscopic plasma density measurements., Published by IOP Publ., Bristol