[en] A spectrometer design has been presented for the electron linear accelerator at Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran. The energy of the linac is 8 MeV (upgradable to 11 MeV) with a maximum current of 10 mA. The design and construction of the machine is nearly finished and it is in the commissioning stage. The linac consists of a thermionic electron gun followed by a pre-buncher and some travelling wave tubes connected together via appropriate flanges. The commissioning process is foreseen in stages of different energies. At each stage an RF cavity will be appended in order to investigate its performance. Therefore, the energy diagnostics is demanded in a wide range—from 50 keV to 8 MeV . A spectrometer based on a dipole magnet, a movable view screen and a focusing solenoid is proposed for this purpose. The challenge is to keep the resolution in the wide range of measurements. This paper first describes the beam dynamics design of the spectrometer with the focus on the measurement resolution. Then the magnetic design of the dipole is presented in details. Two and three dimensional simulations have been carried out in order to optimize the dipole parameters such as the magnetic flux density, multipole components, and the integrated field quality. Finally, magnetic design features of the solenoid have been discussed.

[en] Transverse beam dynamics of an 8 MeV low current (10 mA) S-band traveling wave electron linear accelerator has been studied and optimized. The main issue is to limit the beam emittance, mainly induced by the transverse RF forces. The linac is being constructed at Institute for Research in Fundamental Science (IPM), Tehran Iran Labeled as Iran’s First Linac, nearly all components of this accelerator are designed and constructed within the country. This paper discusses the RF coupler induced field asymmetry and the corresponding emittance at different focusing levels, introduces a detailed beam dynamics design of a solenoid focusing channel aiming to reduce the emittance growth and studies the solenoid misalignment tolerances. In addition it has been demonstrated that a prebuncher cavity with appropriate parameters can help improving the beam quality in the transverse plane.

[en] The project of design and construction of linear electron accelerator is being performed by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM). The aim of the current research is to achieve the knowledge and the technology of manufacturing the components of linear accelerator; one of these components is buncher. In this paper, two types of bunchers are introduced, while the disk-loaded type has been selected to be fabricated. Studying the electrons motion in the field through the aperture of the disks and using the equations of disk-loaded waveguide theory, the dimensions of the desired buncher for this project were obtained. MATLAB software and SUPERFISH code were used in calculations and simulations. The design led to the initial and final phase ranges of 348 degrees and 50 degrees, respectively. The mentioned values for the initial and final phase ranges resulted in a bunching factor of about 7 that is appropriate for this type of the bunchers.

[en] In this paper, the importance of the buncher in linear electron accelerators is discussed and two types of bunchers, velocity-modulation and disk-loaded, are introduced. Higher bunching factor, larger initial phase range, and smaller final phase range are favorable in the disk-loaded buncher. Our investigations showed that the aforementioned situations can be met by appropriate changes in the field strength and the phase velocity. In this study, factors affecting the bunching of electrons have been surveyed using the equations of electron motion. The dynamics of the electron movement through the buncher has been simulated. The results of simulation and calculations revealed that: (1) in order to deliver the maximum energy to the electrons, phase velocity should vary so that a phase of - 90 degrees is achieved by the electrons after the bunching, (2) reducing the initial field strength also increases the initial phase range. If the field strength is large from the beginning, the phase velocity variations will be large and rapidly reach a value of 1. In this case, the initial phase range will become small, (3) the electron gun voltage changes the initial phase; the larger the value of the gun voltage, the wider the initial phase range, and vice versa. The result of this study is going to be applied for design and fabrication of the first Iranian linear accelerator that is under construction.

[en] A free-electron laser based THz source is undergoing design studies at the Photo Injector Test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ). It is considered as a prototype for pump-probe experiments at the European XFEL, benefiting from the fact that the electron beam from the PITZ facility has an identical pulse train structure as the XFEL pulses. In the proposed proof-of-principle experiment, the electron beam (up to 4 nC bunch charge and 200 A peak current) will be accelerated to 16-22 MeV/c to generate SASE radiations in an LCLS-I undulator in the THz range between 60 and 100 pm with an expected energy of up to ∼1 mJ/pulse. In this paper, we report our simulations on the optimization of the photo-injector and the design of the transport and matching beamline. Experimental investigations on the generation, characterization and matching of the high charge beam in the existing 22-m-long beamline will also be presented. (paper)

[en] Design and construction of an electron linear accelerator by Institute for Research in Fundamental Science (IPM) is considered as Iran’s first attempt to construct such an accelerator. In order to design a linear accelerating tube, after defining the accelerating tube and buncher geometries, RF input and output couplers must be designed. In this article, firstly, a brief report on the specifications of an S-band electron linear accelerator which is in progress in the school of particles and accelerators is presented and then, the design process and construction reports of the couplers required for this accelerator are described. Through performing necessary calculations and tuning the coupling factor and resonant frequency, couplers with desired specification have been fabricated by shrinking method. The final obtained coupling factor and resonant frequency have been respectively 1.05 and 2997 MHz for the first coupler, and 0.98 and 2996.9 MHz for the second one that are close to calculation results

[en] Laser pulse shaping is one of the key elements to generate low emittance electron beams with RF photoinjectors. Ultimately high performance can be achieved with ellipsoidal laser pulses, but 3-dimensional shaping is challenging. High beam quality can also be reached by simple transverse pulse shaping, which has demonstrated improved beam emittance compared to a transversely uniform laser in the ‘pancake’ photoemission regime. In this contribution we present the truncation of a Gaussian laser at a radius of approximately one sigma in the intermediate (electron bunch length directly after emission about the same as radius) photoemission regime with high acceleration gradients (up to 60 MV/m). This type of electron bunch is used e.g. at the European XFEL and FLASH free electron lasers at DESY, Hamburg site and is being investigated in detail at the Photoinjector Test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ). Here we present ray-tracing simulations and experimental data of a laser beamline upgrade enabling variable transverse truncation. Initial projected emittance measurements taken with help of this setup are shown, as well as supporting beam dynamics simulations. Additional simulations show the potential for substantial reduction of slice emittance at PITZ. (paper)

[en] In the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) the RF power for the acceleration of the Main Beam is extracted from a high-current Drive Beam that runs parallel to the main linac. The longitudinal and transverse beam dynamics of the Drive Beam injector has been studied in detail and optimized. The injector consists of a thermionic gun followed by a bunching system, some accelerating structures, and a magnetic chicane. The bunching system contains three sub-harmonic bunchers, a prebuncher, and a traveling wave buncher all embedded in a solenoidal magnetic field. The main characteristic of the Drive Beam injector is the phase coding process done by the sub-harmonic bunching system operating at half the acceleration frequency. This process is essential for the frequency multiplication of the Drive Beam. During the phase coding process the unwanted satellite bunches are produced that adversely affects the machine power efficiency. The main challenge is to reduce the population of particles in the satellite bunches in the presence of strong space-charge forces due to the high beam current. The simulation of the beam dynamics has been carried out with PARMELA with the goal of optimizing the injector performance compared to the existing model studied for the Conceptual Design Report (CDR). The emphasis of the optimization was on decreasing the satellite population, the beam loss in the magnetic chicane and limiting the beam emittance growth in transverse plane