Simulation study of a photo-injector for brightness improvement in Thomson scattering X-ray source via ballistic bunching

Increasing the peak brightness is beneficial to various applications of the Thomson scattering X-ray source. A higher peak brightness of the scattered X-ray pulse demands a shorter scattering electron beam realized by beam compression in the electron beam-line. In this article, we study the possibility of compressing the electron beam in a typical S-band normal conducting photo-injector via ballistic bunching, through just adding a short RF linac section right behind the RF gun, so as to improve the peak brightness of the scattered x-ray pulse. Numerical optimization by ASTRA demonstrates that the peak current can increase from 50 A to > 300 A for a 500 pC, 10 ps FWHM electron pulse, while normalized transverse RMS emittance and RMS energy spread increases very little. Correspondingly, the peak brightness of the Thomson scattering X-ray source is estimated to increase about three times.