Condensed Matter Student Seminar Series

Title: Enhancing accelerator photocathode performance: an epitaxial growth and diffraction analysis approachAbstract: Alkali antimonides are a class of photoemitting materials that enhance applications ranging from particle accelerators to photodetectors. For electron accelerators, the most important properties of the photocathode are its influence on the initial momentum spread of the emitted electron beam and the quantum efficiency (the number of electrons emitted per incident photon). Recent experiments have demonstrated the growth of single-crystal cesium antimonide via molecular beam epitaxy and highlighted the performance benefits of high quantum efficiency and potentially low intrinsic momentum spread from epitaxial photocathodes. In my talk, I will present studies investigating various material and morphological properties-such as crystallinity, surface roughness, and stoichiometry-that influence the performance of alkali antimonides as electron sources for accelerators.