Experimental Testing of Dynamically Optimized Photoelectron Beams.

We discuss the design of and initial results from an experiment in space-charge dominated beam dynamics which explores a new regime of high-brightness electron beam generation at the SPARC photoinjector. The scheme under study employs the tendency of intense electron beams to rearrange to produce uniform density, giving a nearly ideal beam from the viewpoint of space charge-induced emittance. The experiments are aimed at testing the marriage of this idea with a related concept, emittance compensation. We show that this new regime of operating photoinjector may be the preferred method of obtaining highest brightness beams with lower energy spread. We discuss the design of the experiment, including developing of a novel time-dependent, aerogel-based imaging system. This system has been installed at SPARC, and first evidence for nearly uniformly filled ellipsoidal charge distributions recorded. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]