A program is underway 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, to produce bright electron bunches. The novel X-band (11.7 GHz) photoemission gun (Xgun) is powered by high-power, short RF pulses (9 ns) generated by the AWA drive beam in a wakefield structure. In the first series of experiments, the Xgun demonstrated peak fields of ~400 MV/m on the photocathode surface. As a first step towards achieving a complete understanding of the Xgun’s performance in the high-field regime, we studied the photoemission mechanism by measuring the quantum efficiency (QE) and thermal emittance across a large range of operating fields on the photocathode surface from 60 MV/m to values exceeding 300 MV/m. In this work, we will present the results of our experimental measurements and simulation studies on examining photoemission at high fields on the photocathode surface.

Ultrafast Microscopy using MeV beam has made significant progress in the past 5 years. However, in order to push to atomic level resolution, other than the requirements of beam source, there are also high demands in high strength focusing elements. In comparison of commercial 100s KeV level electron microscopes, an MeV imaging beamline requires Tesla level lenses, preferably round solenoid lens. Tesla class DC solenoids are prohibitively bulky and heavy, and superconducting solenoids are not cost effective. We have developed a novel miniature flux concentrator based solenoid lens system for MeV UED/UEM applications. It can reach 2-Tesla with 1e-5 level stability (depending on the pulsed current source). Here we will present detailed development process and experimental results.

SRF photoguns become a promising candidate to produce highly stable electrons for UEM/UED applications because of the ultrahigh shot-to-shot stability compared to room temperature RF photoguns. SRF technology was prohibitively expensive for industrial use until two recent advancements: Nb3Sn and conduction cooling. SRF gun can provide a CW operation capability while consuming only 2W of RF power which eliminates the need of an expensive high power RF system and saves a facility footprint. Euclid is developing a continuous wave (CW), 1.5-cell, MeV-scale SRF conduction cooled photogun operating at 1.3 GHz. We aim for generation of the first beam in 2024. In this paper, we present the most up-to-date progress including results of the first cool down of the gun-cavity in the newly developed conduction cooled cryomodule and LLRF system development.