Ultracold and High Brightness Electron Source for next Generation Particle Accelerators

The ultracold plasma-based electron source has recently been proposed as an alternative to conventional photoinjectors or thermionic electron guns, which are widely used in today’s particle accelerators. The advantages of the ultracold plasma-based electron source lie in the fact that the electrons extracted from the cold plasma (from near threshold ionization of ultracold atoms) has very low temperature, e.g. down to 10 K, and has the potential for producing very low emittance and therefore high brightness electron bunches. These features are crucial for the next generation particle accelerators, e.g., free electron lasers, plasma-based accelerators and the future linear colliders. In this paper, we discuss the basic mechanism of ultracold electron beam production and introduce our new facility for an ultracold, high brightness electron source based at the University of Manchester’s Photon Science Institute (PSI).