A 2 MeV, 100 mA electron accelerator for a small laboratory environment

A small, high performance electron linear accelerator is described. It is a modified version of a commercially available portable x-ray source. The 9.3 GHz rf linac and beamline deliver a 3 ns train of approximately 15 ps pulses with a peak current, limited by beam loading of the rf structure, of more than 100 mA and a beam energy of around 2 MeV with a 5% full width at half maximum energy spread. The beam emittance is 6π mm mrad and the final spot size is 250 μm diam for f/10 focusing.