We present a novel concept for the generation of gigahertz repetition rate high brightness electron bunches. A custom design 100 kV thermionic gun provides a continuous electron beam, with the current determined by the filament size and temperature. A 1 GHz rectangular RF cavity deflects the beam across a knife-edge, creating a pulsed beam. Adding a higher harmonic mode to this cavity results in a flattened magnetic field profile which increases the duty cycle to 30%. Finally, a compression cavity induces a negative longitudinal velocity-time chirp in a bunch, initiating ballistic compression. Adding a higher harmonic mode to this cavity increases the linearity of this chirp and thus decreases the final bunch length. Charged particle simulations show that with a 0.15 mm radius LaB6 filament held at 1760 K, this method can create 279 fs, 3.0 pC electron bunches with a radial rms core emittance of 0.089 mm mrad at a repetition rate of 1 GHz.
@article{arxiv.1905.08938,
title = {Gigahertz repetition rate thermionic electron gun concept},
author = {W. F. Toonen and X. F. D. Stragier and P. H. A. Mutsaers and O. J. Luiten},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.08938},
year = {2019}
}