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Photoinjectors are the main high brightness electron sources for X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL). Photoinjector emittance reduction is one of the key knobs for improving XFEL lasing, so precise emittance measurement is critical. It's well known that rms emittance is very sensitive to low intensity tails of particle distributions in the phase space, whose measurement depend on the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and image processing procedures. Such sensitivities make the interpretations of beam transverse brightness challenging, leading to different emittance definitions to reduce the impact of tail particles. In this paper, transverse phase space is analyzed in action and phase coordinates for both analytical models and experiments, which give a more intuitive way to calculate the beam core brightness.

Slice energy spread is one of the key parameters in free electron laser optimizations, but its accurate measurement is not straightforward. Two recent studies from high energy ($>$100 MeV) photoinjectors at SwissFEL and European XFEL have reported much higher slice energy spread than expected at their XFEL working points (200 - 250 pC). In this paper, a new method for measuring slice energy spread at a lower beam energy ($\sim$20 MeV) is proposed and demonstrated at the PhotoInjector Test facility at DESY Zeuthen (PITZ), and the results for 250 pC and 500 pC are much lower than those measured at high energy injectors.

Speedrunning in general means to play a video game fast, i.e. using all means at one's disposal to achieve a given goal in the least amount of time possible. To do so, a speedrun must be planned in advance, or routed, as referred to by the community. This paper focuses on discovering challenges and defining models needed when trying to approach the problem of routing algorithmically. To do so, this paper is split in two parts. The first part provides an overview of relevant speedrunning literature, extracting vital information and formulating criticism. Important categorizations are pointed out and a nomenclature is built to support professional discussion. The second part of this paper then refers to the actual speedrun routing optimization problem. Different concepts of graph representations are presented and their potential is discussed. Visions both for problem modeling as well as solving are presented and assessed regarding suitability and expected challenges. Finally, a first assessment of the applicability of existing optimization methods to the defined problem is made, including metaheuristics/EA and Deep Learning methods., Comment: 16 pages. This preprint has not undergone peer review (when applicable) or any post-submission improvements or corrections. The Version of Record of this contribution is published in Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoApplications 2022; Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13224, and is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02462-7_30

In state of the art photoinjector electron sources, thermal emittance from photoemission dominates the final injector emittance. Therefore, low thermal emittance cathode developments and diagnostics are very important. Conventional thermal emittance measurements for the high gradient gun are time-consuming and thus thermal emittance is not measured as frequently as quantum efficiency during the lifetime of photocathodes, although both are important properties for the photoinjector optimizations. In this paper, a single shot measurement of photoemission transverse momentum, i.e., thermal emittance per rms laser spot size, is proposed for photocathode RF guns. By tuning the gun solenoid focusing, the electrons transverse momenta at the cathode are imaged to a downstream screen, which enables a single shot measurement of both the rms value and the detailed spectra of the photoelectrons transverse momenta. Both simulations and proof of principle experiments are reported., Comment: 9 pages, 15 figures

A non-resonant streaming instability driven by cosmic-ray currents, also called Bell's instability, is proposed as a candidate for providing the required magnetic turbulence of efficient diffusive shock accelerations. To demonstrate the saturation level and mechanism of the non-resonant streaming instability in a laboratory environment, we attempt to develop an experiment at the Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ). As an electron beam is used to replace the proton beam to carry the cosmic-ray current in our experiment, the polarization of the non-resonant streaming instability will be modified from the left-handed (LH) mode to the right-handed (RH) mode. The theoretical instability analysis shows that the growth rate of this RH non-resonant mode may be smaller than it of the LH resonant mode. However the LH resonant mode can be ignored in our experiment while the expected wavelength is longer than the used plasma cell. The results of PIC simulations will also support this contention and the occurrence of non-resonant streaming instability in our experiment.

Temporally-modulated electron beams have a wide array of applications ranging from the generation of coherently-enhanced electromagnetic radiation to the resonant excitation of electromagnetic wakefields in advanced-accelerator concepts. Likewise producing low-energy ultrashort microbunches could be useful for ultra-fast electron diffraction and new accelerator-based light-source concepts. In this Letter we propose and experimentally demonstrate a passive microbunching technique capable of forming a picosecond bunch train at $\sim 6$~MeV. The method relies on the excitation of electromagnetic wakefields as the beam propagates through a dielectric-lined waveguide. Owing to the non-ultrarelativistic nature of the beam, the induced energy modulation eventually converts into a density modulation as the beam travels in a following free-space drift. The modulated beam is further accelerated to $\sim20$~MeV while preserving the imparted density modulation.

We report on an approach to produce quasi continuous-wave (cw) electron beams with an average beam current of milliamperes and a mean beam energy of a few MeV in a pulsed RF injector. Potential applications are in the planned laboratory astrophysics programs at DESY. The beam generation is based on field emission from a specially designed metallic field emitter. A quasi cw beam profile is formed over subsequent RF cycles at the resonance frequency of the gun cavity. This is realized by debunching in a cut disk structure accelerating cavity (booster) downstream of the gun. The peak and average beam currents can be tuned in beam dynamics simulations by adjusting operation conditions of the booster cavity. Optimization of the transverse beam size at specific positions (e.g., entrance of the plasma experiment) is performed by applying magnetic focusing fields provided by solenoids along the beam line. In this paper, the design of a microtip field emitter is introduced and characterized in electromagnetic field simulations in the gun cavity. A series of particle tracking simulations are conducted for multi-parametric optimization of the parameters of the produced quasi cw electron beams. The obtained results will be presented and discussed. In addition, measurements of the parasitic field emission (PFE) current (dark current) in the PITZ gun will be exemplarily shown to distinguish its order of magnitude from the produced beam current by the designed field emitter., Comment: 23 pages, 17 figures