Euclid Beamlabs, Bolingbrook, USA
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA
UCSB, Santa Barbara, California, USA
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
GaAs-based photocathodes are one of the major sources of spin-polarized electrons and are crucial for the upcoming Electron-Ion collider experiments which includes study of proton spin and spin parity violation in the standard model. The theoretical polarization limit in unstrained GaAs photocathodes is 50 % but only 35 % is routinely achieved in experiments. Spin selective filtering allows to boost the spin polarization beyond the 50 % theoretical limit. In this work, first-principle electronic calculations using standard Density Functional Theory are performed to predict possible Heusler alloy half-metal candidates to be used as spin-filter. Simulations are also performed to investigate the half-metallicity as function of the magnetic spin direction. Several devices are experimentally fabricated using dedicated Molecular Beam Epitaxy growth system. We implemented Quantum Efficiency and Polarization testing of these half-metal/GaAs heterostructures using a dedicated Mott polarimeter system. Photoemission can also be seen on magnetically switching the spin-filter direction accompanied by a change in sign of the asymmetry which is a qualitative proof of the spin-filtering effect.
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
Euclid Beamlabs, Bolingbrook, USA
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
Private Address, Bolingbrook, USA
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Euclid Beamlabs, Bolingbrook, USA
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
Photocathodes lead in brightness among electron emitters, but transverse momenta are unavoidably nonzero. Ultra-low transverse emittance would enable brighter, higher energy x-ray free-electron lasers (FEL), improved colliders, and more coherent, detailed ultrafast electron diffraction/microscopy (UED/UEM). Although high quantum efficiency (QE) is desired to avoid laser-induced nonlinearities, the state-of-the-art is 100 pC bunches from copper, 0.4 mm-mrad emittance. Advances towards 0.1 mm-mrad require ultra-low emittance, high QE, cryo-compatible materials. We report efforts towards epitaxial growth of cesium antimonide on lattice matched substrates. DFT calculations were performed to downselect from a list of candidate lattice matches. Co-evaporations achieving >3% QE at 532 nm followed by atomic force and Kelvin probe microscopy (AFM and KPFM) show ultra-low 313 pm rms (root mean square) physical and 2.65 mV rms chemical roughness. We simulate roughness-induced mean transverse energy (MTE) to predict <1 meV from roughness effects at 10 MV/m in as-grown optically thick cathodes, promising low emittance via epitaxial growth.