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.
