At the laser undulator compact x-ray source at KEK, our group has designed and built a new rf gun with a larger mode separation of 8.6 MHz and higher $Q$ value than earlier guns. This paper presents details on the design and fabrication, low-power measurements, and tuning procedures followed in the fabrication of the gun cavity. We also give a detailed account of experiments performed with this gun and present measurement results. We have successfully generated 100 bunches per train with a 50 nC charge at 41 MeV and 300 bunches per train with a 160 nC charge at 5 MeV, with low peak-to-peak energy difference. In the future, we plan to go up to a 0.5 nC charge per bunch in an 8000-bunch train at low energy and a 2 nC charge per bunch in a 100-bunch train at high energy. This will make it possible to have higher charge available for laser-beam collisions, thus enabling the generation of high flux soft x rays using the low-energy electron beam and approximately 30 keV x rays using the high-energy electron beam.

• Received 2 July 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.14.063501

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© 2011 American Physical Society