Synchroscan streak camera imaging at a 15-MeV photoinjector with emittance exchange

At the Fermilab A0 photoinjector facility, bunch-length measurements of the laser micropulse and the e-beam micropulse have been done in the past with a fast single-sweep module of the Hamamatsu C5680 streak camera with an intrinsic shot-to-shot trigger jitter of 10-20 ps. We have upgraded the camera system with the synchroscan module tuned to 81.25 MHz to provide synchronous summing capability with less than 1.5 ps FWHM trigger jitter and a phase-locked delay box to provide phase stability of similar to 1 ps over 10 s of minutes. These steps allowed us to measure both the UV laser pulse train at 263 nm and the e-beam via optical transition radiation (OTR). Due to the low electron beam energies and OTR signals, we typically summed over 50 micropulses with 0.25-1 nC per micropulse. The phase-locked delay box allowed us to assess chromatic temporal effects and instigated another upgrade to an all-mirror input optics barrel. In addition, we added a slow sweep horizontal deflection plug-in unit to provide dual-sweep capability for the streak camera. We report on a series of measurements made during the commissioning of these upgrades including bunch-length and phase effects using the emittance exchange beamline and simultaneous imaging of a UV drive laser component, OTR, and the 800 nm diagnostics laser. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.