Operational experience with nanocoulomb bunch charges in the Cornell photoinjector

Characterization of 9--9.5 MeV electron beams produced in the dc-gun based Cornell photoinjector is given for bunch charges ranging from 20 pC to 2 nC. Comparison of the measured emittances and longitudinal current profiles to optimized 3D space charge simulations yields excellent agreement for bunch charges up to 1 nC when the measured laser distribution is used to generate initial particle distributions in simulation. Analysis of the scaling of the measured emittance with bunch charge shows that the emittance scales roughly as the square root of the bunch charge up to 300 pC, above which the trend becomes linear. These measurements demonstrate that the Cornell photoinjector can produce cathode emittance dominated beams meeting the emittance and peak current specifications for next generation free electron lasers operating at high repetition rate. In addition, the 1 and 2 nC results are relevant to the electron ion collider community.