Statistics on High Average Power Operation and Results from the Electron Beam Characterization at PITZ

The Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ) develops, tests and characterizes high brightness electron sources for FLASH and European XFEL. Since these FELs work with superconducting accelerators in pulsed mode, also the corresponding normal-conducting RF gun has to operate with long RF pulses. Generating high beam quality from the photo-cathode RF gun in addition requires a high accelerating gradient at the cathode. Therefore, the RF gun has to ensure stable and reliable operation at high average RF power, e.g. 6.5 MW peak power in the gun for 650 μs RF pulse length and 10 Hz repetition rate for the European XFEL. Several RF gun setups have been operated towards these goals over the last years. The latest gun setup is in operation since March 2016 and includes RF Gun 4.6 with an improved contact spring design. The RF input distribution consists of a coaxial coupler, a T-combiner and 2 RF windows from DESY production. In this contribution we will present statistics on the high average power operation and results from the characterization of the produced electron beam