A program is under way at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) facility, in collaboration with Euclid Techlabs and Northern Illinois University (NIU) to develop a GV/m-scale photocathode gun, with the goal of producing bright electron bunches. The novel X-band (11.7 GHz) photo-gun (Xgun) is powered by high-power, short rf pulses (9 ns), which are generated by the AWA drive beam in a wakefield structure. In the first series of experiments, the Xgun produced ~400 MV/m peak field on the photocathode surface. The Xgun has also shown exceptional robustness, with no noticeable breakdown observed after being fully conditioned. As a first step towards achieving a complete understanding of the Xgun's performance, we aim to investigate the fundamentals of photoemission in the high-gradient regime. Systematic simulations will be presented for the near-future photocathode thermal emittance measurements.

In this paper, we present a study of the transformation of a magnetized electron beam from round to flat and back to round using a skew quadrupole triplet. Electron cooling of hadron beams requires a magnetized electron beam, which can be generated from an RF photoinjector. However, such a beam is coupled in four-dimensional phase space, making it difficult to transport through beamlines. To address this challenge, we use a skew quadrupole triplet to remove the coupling and form a flat beam with different emittance in the horizontal and vertical planes and a high aspect ratio. Likewise, we use an additional skew quadrupole triplet to restore the correlation to the beam. We use particle tracking simulations to identify the optimal positions and strengths of the skew quadrupole magnets for the beam transformation. Finally, we present experimental demonstrations of the beam transformation at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator Facility.

To better understand the beam-RF jitter at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator Facility, a high-resolution bunch arrival monitor (BAM) is being developed. The BAM take advantages of a commercial, electro-optic modulator (EOM) to measure the bunch timing though optical modulation. This non-descructive technique is far superior and the resolution can be as high as several femto-second. A prototype has been developed.