Performance of the PHIN High Charge Photo Injector

The high charge PHIN photo injector is studied at CERN as an electron source for the CLIC Test Facility (CTF3) drive beam as an alternative to the present thermionic gun. The objective of PHIN is to demonstrate the feasibility of a laser-based electron source for CLIC. The photo injector operates with a 2.5 cell, 3 GHz RF gun using a Cs2Te photocathode illuminated by UV laser pulses generated by amplifying and frequency quadrupling the signal from a Nd:YLF oscillator running at 1.5GHz. The challenge is to generate a beam structure of 1908 micro bunches with 2.33nC per micro bunch at 1.5GHz leading to a high integrated train charge of 4446nC and nominal beam energy of 5.5MeV with current stability below 1%. In this paper we report and discuss the time resolved transverse and longitudinal beam parameters measurements. The performance of the photo cathodes made at CERN with a peak quantum efficiency of 18 % is shown as well. Laser pointing and amplitude stability results are discussed taking into account correlation between laser and electron beam.