FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
PKU/IHIP, Beijing, People's Republic of China
Recently, the Duke optical klystron FEL (OK-5 FEL) has been commissioned to produce lasing in the VUV region (191 - 193 nm), overcoming substantial laser cavity loss due to low reflectivity of the VUV FEL mirrors. With two OK-5 FEL wigglers separated by more than 20 meters in a non-optimal configuration, an adequate FEL gain was realized by operating the Duke storage ring with a high single-bunch current (30 to 50 mA). This VUV FEL has enabled us to produce circularly polarized Compton gamma-ray beams in the 70 to 100 MeV region at the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS), Duke University. This high energy gamma-ray beam capability will create new opportunities for both fundamental and applied research at HIGS. In this work, we report our experience of VUV FEL lasing with a high single-bunch current and first production of gamma-ray beams in the 70 to 100 MeV region.
FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
The accelerator facility for the Duke FEL and High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS) consists of a linac pre-injector, a top-off booster injector, and the storage ring. The S-band RF gun with the LaB6 cathode was initially operated in the thermionic mode, producing a long electron beam pulse and a large radiation background. In 1997, the thermionic RF gun was converted to a photo-cathode operation using a nitrogen drive laser for single bunch injection into the storage ring. The photo-cathode operation typically delivers 0.1 nC of charge in a 1 ns long pulse to the linac. Since 2006, substantial improvements have been made to the photo-cathode and the linac, including improvements of the nitrogen drive laser, development of driver laser optical transport and beam monitoring system, and optimization of the cathode heater current to minimize the thermionic emission. In addition, two electron beam charge measurement systems using Faraday cup detectors and sample and hold electronics have been developed. In this work, we will present these new developments and discuss the impact of these upgrades on everyday operation of the linac pre-injector.