Novel Photocathode Geometry Optimization: Field Enhancing Photoemission Tips

For photoemission sources, the extraction electric field defines the maximum achievable emission current, and hence the maximum achievable beam brightness. Recently, interest has been growing in studying photocathodes with non-flat geometries to produce local field enhancements in excess of what can be achieved with large area flat cathodes. However, such geometries cause image charge effects which require self-consistent field solvers to correctly simulate. We present a novel simulation framework which combines a full particle in cell field solver (WARP) with a fast adaptive mesh space charge particle tracker (GPT) and a parallel multi-objective genetic optimizer to explore photocathode geometries for ultra high brightnesses. A first application of this technique is also shown, namely the use of field enhanced photoemission tips to create bright beams for ultra-fast electron diffraction.