Measurement and analysis of field emission electrons in the LCLS gun

Abstract

The field emission was measured during the high- power testing of the LCLS photocathode RF gun. A careful study and analysis of the field emission electrons, or dark current is important in assessing the gun's internal surface quality in actual operation, especially those surfaces with high fields. The first indication of a good RF gun design and fabrication is short processing time to the required fields and low electron emission at high- fields. The charge per 2 microsecond long RF pulse (the dark charge) was measured as a function of the peak cathode field for the 1.6 cell, 2.856 GHz LCLS RF gun. Faraday cup data was taken for cathode peak RF fields up to 120 MV/m producing a maximum of 0.6 nC/RF pulse for a diamond-turned polycrystalline copper cathode installed in the gun. Digitized images of the dark charge were taken using a 100 micron thick YAG crystal for a range of solenoid fields to determine the location and angular distribution of the field emitters. The FN plots and emitter image analysis will be described in this paper.