Ultrashort-bunch electron RF gun

Two ultrashort electron-bunch photocathode RF guns in picosecond (ps) and femtosecond (fs) time region are reviewed. The ps gun was developed and used successfully to generate an ultralow-emittance and high-charge electron beam with normalized emittance of 1.2 mm-mrad at bunch charge of 1 nC. The low-emittance electron beam has been used successfully to produce a 100-fs high-charge electron single bunch with a booster linear accelerator and a magnetic bunch compressor. An ultrafast pulse radiolysis with time resolution of 240 fs was constructed using the fs electron beam for the study of ultrafast reactions in radiation chemistry and biology. The fs gun, developed under the KEK/Osaka University collaboration with a new structure cavity and many improvements, was succeeded in producing directly a near-relativistic 100-fs electron beam with energy of 1-3 MeV. Femtosecond time-resolved electron diffraction has been constructed using the fs RF gun for the study of photon-induced phase transition in materials. Some experimental results of pulse radiolysis and MeV electron diffraction in fs time region were reported and discussed. (author)