Transverse beam envelope measurements and the limitations of the 3-screen emittance method for space-charge dominated beams

In its normal mode of operation, the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator Facility uses a high charge (10–100 nC), short pulse (3–5 ps) drive bunch to excite high-gradient accelerating fields in various slow-wave structures. To generate this bunch, we designed a 1.5 cell, L-band, rf photocathode gun with an emittance compensating solenoid to give optimal performance at high charge; it has recently completed commissioning. More recently, we have begun to investigate the possibility of using this gun in a high-brightness, low-charge operating mode, with charge equal to approximately 1 nC, for high-precision measurements of wakefields. Two related measurements are reported on in this paper: (1) measurements of the transverse beam envelope are compared to predictions from the beam dynamics code PARMELA; and (2) investigations into the use of a modified 3-screen emittance measurement method that uses a beam envelope model that includes both space-charge and emittance effects. Both measurements were made for the 1 nC, 8 MeV beam in the drift region directly following the rf photocathode gun.