Space-charge effects on bunching of electrons in the CEBAF injector

The main injector for the 4 GeV CEBAF accelerator at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility was designed to deliver simultaneously three CW electron beams for nuclear physics research. The maximum design current for a single beam from the injector is 100 μA, or 0.2 pC per microbunch at a repetition rate of 499 MHz. It was found through computer simulation that space charge even at a subpicocoulomb level can spoil the bunching of electrons significantly, and some unexpected phenomena observed experimentally could be explained accordingly. This problem arises because of the low-momentum tilt allowed for bunching to preserve low-momentum spread. In this paper, we analyze in detail the space-charge effects on bunching of electrons with the CEBAF injector as an example. Conditions for effective matching of longitudinal phase space in the presence of space charge are discussed.