High-brightness high-duty cycle electron injectors

High brightness electron sources have been one of the driving forces behind the spectacular results achieved in the last decade by accelerator-based applications. Indeed, X-Ray FELs, with their 10-fold orders of magnitude increase in peak brightness, probably represent the best example of it. New ambitious proposals for X-ray FELs and ERLs, as well as inverse Compton sources for X- or gamma-ray production, are now requiring operation at MHz-GHz repetition rates. In response to that, a number of groups around the world have been actively working in developing high-brightness high-duty cycle electron injectors capable of driving such machines. The high repetition rate requirement cannot be met by the existing low-repetition rate high-brightness injector schemes, and new technologies are under investigation. This paper includes a description of the requirements for such injectors, an overview of the pursued technologies and schemes, a description of the main beam dynamics issues associated with the different choices, and a number of examples of the results obtained so far by the groups active in the field.