Design of a VHF-band RF photoinjector with megahertz beam repetition rate

New generation accelerator-based X-ray light sources require high quality beams with high average brightness. Normal conducting L- and S-band photo injectors are limited in repetition rate and D-C (photo)injectors are limited in field strength at the cathode. We propose a low frequency normal-conducting cavity, operating at 50 to 100 MHz CW, to provide beam bunches of up to the cavity frequency. The photoinjector uses a re-entrant cavity structure, requiring less than 100 kW CW, with a peak wall power density less than 10 W/cm². The cavity will support a vacuum down to 10 picoTorr, with a load-lock mechanism for easy replacement of photocathodes. The photocathode can be embedded in a magnetic field to provide correlations useful for emittance exchange. Beam dynamics simulations indicate that normalized emittances smaller than 1 mm-mrad are possible with gap voltage of 750 kV, with fields up to 20 MV/m at the photocathode, for 1 nanocoulomb charge per bunch after acceleration and emittance compensation. Long-bunch operation (10´s of picosecond) is made possible by the low cavity frequency, permitting low bunch current at the 750 kV gap voltage.