Establishing reliable good initial quantum efficiency and in-situ laser cleaning for the copper cathodes in the RF gun

Establishing good initial quantum efficiency (QE) and reliable in-situ cleaning for copper cathode in the RF gun is of critical importance for the RF gun operations. Recent studies on the SLAC RF gun test bed indicated that the pre-cleaning (plasma cleaning) in the test chamber followed by copper cathode exposure to air for cathode change leads to a very low initial QE in the RF gun, and also demonstrated that without the pre-cleaning good initial QE >4×10−5 can be routinely achieved in the RF gun with the cathodes of QE <1×10−7 measured in the test chamber. QE can decay over the time in the RF gun. The in-situ laser cleaning technique for copper cathodes in the RF gun is established and refined in comparison to previous cleaning at the linac coherent light source, resulting in an improved QE and emittance evolutions. The physics of the laser cleaning process is discussed. It is believed that the reflectivity change is one of the major factors for the QE boost with the laser cleaning.