Recent work has shown the possibility of generating self-shaped ellipsoidal beams with properties commensurate with the requirements of future light sources such as free-electron lasers and inverse Compton sources. In this so-termed “blowout” regime, short laser bunches are transformed via photoemission into short electron bunches which then self-consistently evolve into nearly uniform-density ellipsoids under space-charge forces. We report here on the first blowout studies conducted in collaboration between the UCLA Particle Beam Physics Lab and the Photo Injector Test Facility, Zeuthen (PITZ). The measurements conducted at the PITZ photoinjector facility examine the evolution of 750 pC, 2.7 ps FWHM electron bunches born in an L-band photoinjector and subsequently accelerated through a nine-cell L-band booster for a resulting energy of 12 MeV. These measurements represent the first observations of self-shaped ellipsoid evolution under postinjector acceleration, a key step in demonstrating the utility of such self-shaped beams at higher energy, where the advantages in both transverse and longitudinal and transverse phase space may be exploited in creating very high brightness beams.

• Received 3 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.14.012801

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