Design of an electron gun for terahertz radiation source

An EC-ITC (External-Cathode Independently Tunable Cells) RF gun was employed with the aim of obtaining short-pulse bunches with high peak current for a terahertz radiation source. A gridded DC gun plays a key role as the external injecting electron source of the ITC RF gun, the performance of which determines the beam quality in the injector and transport line. In order to make the beam well compressed in the ITC RF gun, the energy of the electrons acquired from the gridded DC gun should be 15 keV at most. A proper structure of the gridded gun with double-anode is shown to overcome the strong space- charge force on the cathode, which is able to generate 6 μs beam with 4.5 A current successfully.