Production of high brightness electron beams with a 17 GHz RF gun

We report on beam measurement results from the MIT 17 GHz RF gun experiment. Tests of a 1.5 cell RF gun have been completed, with bunch charges up to 0.1 nC and beam energies up to 1 MeV produced. The normalized rms emittance of the beam after 35 cm of transport from the gun has been measured to be about 3 πmm mrad for a 50 pC bunch. This agrees with PARMELA simulations at these beam energies, and can be shown to correspond to a beam brightness of about 80 A/(πmm mrad)² at the gun exit. Results of a 2.4 cell 17 GHz RF gun are also reported. This gun has been built and cold tested and high power RF conditioning has begun. The gun is designed to produce a 2 MeV beam with peak accelerating gradients of 200 MV/m. After emittance compensation, simulations predict a 0.1 nC bunch with a normalized emittance of 0.5 πmm mrad can be produced, corresponding to a beam brightness of 800 A/(πmm mrad)²