Time-of-flight jitter reduction based on an energy spectrometer for ultrafast electron diffraction

An Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (UED) based on an RF photocathode electron gun has the advantage of producing MeV relativistic probing electron beams, which can maintain a high time resolution of ~100 fs while keeping more electrons to improve the S/R ratio of the image. However, the jitter of driving RF power in the electron gun between pulse to pulse has an indispensable impact on the electron energy stability leading to the Time of Flight (ToF) jitter, which creates asynchronization between the pump laser and the probing electron worsening the time resolution. To stabilize the beam energy to the designed value 3 MeV and reduce the ToF jitter further, we propose controlling the electron energy based on an energy spectrometer directly. An electron spectrometer based on a C-type dipole is being designed to achieve high energy resolution. This paper will introduce the design of the energy spectrometer, and particle tracking is implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the design.