Beyond Uniform Ellipsoidal Laser Shaping for Beam Brightness Improvements at PITZ

In the last decades, photoinjector brightness has improved significantly, driven by the needs of free electron lasers and many other applications. One of the key elements is photocathode laser shaping for reducing emittance growth from nonlinear space charge forces. At the photoinjector test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ), a uniform flattop laser was used to achieve record low emittance for a bunch charge from 20 pC to 1 nC. Due to the ideal 3D space charge force linearization in ellipsoidal electron bunches, uniform ellipsoidal photocathode laser shaping were proposed to improve beam emittance up to 33% for 1 nC beam at PITZ. In this paper, we will show even further transverse emittance improvements in simulations for both flattop and ellipsoidal laser pulses with parabolic radial distribution, versus uniform distributions. The laser shaping effects on longitudinal phase space are also discussed