A numerical study of emittance growths in RF guns

A beam with greatly reduced emittance is required for further improvements of FELs, in particular, for FELs of shorter wavelengths, and of narrower bandwidths. From this viewpoint, the BNL/SLAC/UCLA 1.6-cell S-band photocathode RF gun performance characteristics were calculated, first in order to evaluate what may contribute to the emittance growths in photocathode RF guns. We developed an RF gun to produce an electron beam with an extremely low emittance, by using a 2-D simulation code. It is found that, by optimizing the laser injection phase, the drive laser spot radius and the cavity shape around the laser spot, the beam emittance by the 1.6-cell RF gun can be greatly reduced to 2.1 πmm mrad, from the previous 4.4 πmm mrad of the original shape.