A Drive Laser for Multi-Bunch Photoinjector Operation

Numerous electron beam applications would benefit from increased average current without sacrificing beam brightness. Work is underway at LLNL to investigate the performance of X-band photoinjectors that would generate electron bunches at a rate matching the RF drive frequency, i.e. one bunch per RF cycle. A critical part of this effort involves development of photo-cathode drive laser technology. Here we present a new laser architecture that can generate pulse trains at repetition rates up to several GHz. This compact, fiber-based system is driven directly by the accelerator RF and so is inherently synchronized with the accelerating fields, and scales readily over a wide range of drive frequencies (L-band through X-band). The system will be required to produce 0.5 {mu}J, {approx}200 fs rise time, spatially and temporally shaped UV pulses designed to optimize the electron beam brightness. Presented is the current status of this system, producing 2 ps pulses from a continuous-wave source