Improved Brightness of the ATA Injector

Abstract

with an A-K gap of about 13 cm. There was no grid used during the experiment. The cathode was surrounded by a Pierce correcting shroud and the typical gap voltage was about 2.5 MeV. Our initial tests of the field emission cathodes were done using a woven carbon yarn that was laced through a fine mesh screen and then trimmed to a uniform height. Using these “tufted” cathodes, it was easy to vary the number of emission sites per square centimeter. We also varied the geometry of these cathodes by giving the screen a slight convex shape so that the center of the cathode was about 1 cm closer to the anode plane than the edge of the cathode.