Femtosecond precision measurement of laser-rf phase jitter in a photocathode rf gun

We report on the measurement of the laser-rf phase jitter in a photocathode rf gun with femtosecond precision. In this experiment four laser pulses with equal separation are used to produce electron bunch trains; then the laser-rf phase jitter is obtained by measuring the variations of the electron bunch spacing with an rf deflector. Furthermore, we show that when the gun and the deflector are powered by the same rf source, it is possible to obtain the laser-rf phase jitter in the gun through measurement of the beam-rf phase jitter in the deflector. Based on these measurements, we propose an effective time-stamping method that may be applied in MeV ultrafast electron diffraction facilities to enhance the temporal resolution.