Electron injector for Iranian Infrared Free Electron Laser

The quality of the electron beam for applications like free electron lasers (FELs) has a direct impact on the quality of the laser radiation. The electron injector considered for Iranian Infrared Free Electron Laser (IRIFEL) includes a thermionic RF electron gun plus a bunch compressor as the electron preinjector and a 50 MeV constant gradient traveling wave linac as the main accelerator of the electron injector. In the present work, a thermionic RF gun is designed and matched with an optimized linac to produce a high quality mono-energetic electron beam. The results show that the preinjector is capable of delivering an electron bunch with 1 ps bunch length and 3 mm-mrad emittance to the linac entrance which is desirable for IRIFEL operation. The results also show that by geometrical manipulation and optimization of the linac structure, the pattern of the RF fields in the linac will be more symmetric, which is important in order to produce high stable mono-energetic bunches.