Development of a continuous-wave photocathode very-high-frequency electron gun for $\rm S^3FEL$
A very-high-frequency (VHF) electron gun operating at a resonant frequency of 216.667 MHz has been developed at Tsinghua University for the Shenzhen Superconducting Soft X-ray Free-Electron Laser ($\rm S^3FEL$) facility. Building upon the SHINE gun design, the cavity profile was optimized to achieve a higher cathode electric-field gradient and a higher accelerating voltage at comparable input power. The revised cavity geometry also yields improved multipacting performance. In addition, thermal analysis was carried out to guide the water-cooling design, and enhanced cooling was implemented in the vicinity of the cathode. During high-power conditioning, 82 kW of continuous-wave radio-frequency power was successfully coupled into the gun, corresponding to a cathode gradient of 29.9 MV/m and an accelerating voltage of 856 kV. The gun voltage surpasses the previous world record for room-temperature VHF guns. The maximum dark current measured by the Faraday cup at the gun exit was only 6.8 nA.