Preliminary UED Studies at PITZ

The high brightness electron sources for FLASH and European XFEL are based on 1.3 GHz RF guns with up to 1 ms long RF pulse at 10 Hz. The beam momentum and repetition rate out of the gun are up to 6.5 MeV/c and 27000 pulses per second. Besides serving as the electron source for XFEL, a copy of the RF gun combined with a compact linear accelerator (~20 MeV) is also proposed to provide FEL based THz pump pulses for Eu-XFEL users, which features both high pulse energy (~mJ) and high repetition rate (up to 27000 pulses/sec). Such a setup is under preparation for proof of principle tests at Photo Injector Test Facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ). In addition, ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) can be an add-on instrument for Eu-XFEL users on the same THz beamline with minimal cost. In this talk, preliminary investigations of UED at PITZ are reported, including simulations of electron beam parameter space and proof of principle tests on static electron diffraction in collaboration with Max Born Institute (MBI) and Fritz Haber Institute (FHI)