Development of a superconducting radio frequency photoelectron injector

A superconducting radio frequency (RF) photoelectron injector (SRF gun) is under development at the Research Center Dresden-Rossendorf. This project aims mainly at replacing the present thermionic gun of the superconducting electron linac ELBE. Thereby the beam quality is greatly improved. Especially, the normalized transverse emittance can be reduced by up to one order of magnitude depending on the operating conditions. The length of the electron bunches will be shortened by about two orders of magnitude making the present bunchers in the injection beam line dispensable. The maximum obtainable bunch charge of the present thermionic gun amounts to 80 pC. The SRF gun is designed to deliver also higher bunch charge values up to 2.5 nC. Therefore, this gun can be used also for advanced facilities such as energy recovery linacs (ERLs) and soft X-ray FELs. The SRF gun is designed as a 312 cell cavity structure with three cells basically TESLA cells supplemented by a newly developed gun cell and a choke filter. The exit energy is projected to be 9.5 MeV. In this paper, we present a description of the design of the SRF gun with special emphasis on the physical and technical problems arising from the necessity of integrating a photocathode into the superconducting cavity structure. Preparation, transfer, cooling and alignment of the photocathode are discussed. In designing the SRF gun cryostat for most components wherever possible the technical solutions were adapted from the ELBE cryostat in some cases with major modifications. As concerns the status of the project the design is finished, most parts are manufactured and the gun is being assembled. Some of the key components are tested in special test arrangements such as cavity warm tuning, cathode cooling, the mechanical behavior of the tuners and the effectiveness of the magnetic screening of the cavity.