UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
Laser-induced field emission from nanostructures as a means to create high brightness electron beams has been a continually growing topic of study. Experiments using nanoblade emitters have achieved peak fields upwards of 40 GV/m according to semi-classical analyses, begging further theoretical investigation. A recent paper has provided analytical reductions of the common semi-infinite Jellium system for pulsed incident lasers. We utilize these results to further understand the physics underlying electron rescattering-type emissions. We numerically evaluate this analytical solution to efficiently produce spectra and yield curves. The effect of space-charge trapping at emission may be simply included by directly modifying these spectra. Additionally, we use a self-consistent 1-D time-dependent Schrödinger equation with an image charge potential to study the same system as a more exact, but computationally costly, approach. With these results we may finally investigate the mean transverse energy and beam brightness at the cathode in these extreme regimes.
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
Increasing brightness at the cathode is highly desirable for a diverse suite of applications in the electron accelerator community. These applications range from free electron lasers to ultrafast electron diffraction. Many options for higher brightness cathodes are under investigation notably semiconductor cathodes. We consider here the possibility for an alternative paradigm whereby the cathode surface is controlled to reduce the effective area of illumination and emission. We fabricated nanoblade metallic coated cathodes using common nanofabrication techniques. We have demonstrated that a beam can be successfully extracted with a low emittance and we have reconstructed a portion of the energy spectrum. As a result of our particular geometry, our beam possesses a notably high aspect ratio in its transverse plane. We can now begin to consider modifications for the production of intentionally patterned beams such as higher aspect ratios and hollow beams.
