Abstract

The Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) paradigm offers the promise to generate intense electron beams of superior quality with extremely small six-dimensional phase space for the the generation of highly coherent high average brightness photon beams. Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin started in 2010 an intensive R&D programme to address the challenges related to the ERL as driver for future light sources by setting up the bERLinPro (Berlin ERL Project) ERL with 50 MeV beam energy and 100 mA average current. The SRF gun development programme for bERLinPro sets out to push the brightness and average current limits of electron guns for ERLs by tackling the main challenges related to the beam dynamics of SRF guns, the incorporation of high QE photocathode and suppression of unwanted beam generation. First beam from a high QE photocathode inside a SRF gun is expected for autumn 2016. This paper reports on the overall progress of the project.

© 2016 Optical Society of America