Driver linac design for a femtosecond head-on inverse Compton scatteringX-ray source

The feasibility of generating an ultra-short relativistic electron beam with a thermionic cathode rf gun driver linac for a femtosecond head-on inverse Compton scattering (ICS) X-ray source has been examined by space charge tracking throughout the entire beamline, from the cathode to the interaction point. It has been determined that GHz-repetition-rate electron pulses as short as 49 fs can be produced by compressing the energy-chirped beam from a 2998-MHz, 1.5-cell rf gun with an alpha magnet and an rf linac operating at the injection phase near the zero crossing. These electron pulses, with a 42-pC bunch charge, are accelerated to 27 MeV with an S-band traveling-wave constant-gradient linac structure for the ICS in an interaction chamber located downstream. The driver linac design that allows the operation of an ultra-short ICS X-ray source at a 0.7-Å wavelength, with a peak photon flux of 9.08×1017 photons/s, is presented in this paper.