Significance of Space Charge and the Earth Magnetic Field on the Dispersive Characteristics of a Low Energy Electron Beam

The combination of energy spread and space charge provides a rich domain for interesting beam dynamics that are currently not well understood. The University of Maryland Electron Ring (UMER) [1] is a small scaled ring designed to probe the little-known regions of higher beam intensities using low-energy electrons. As such, design, commissioning and operation of UMER present many challenges, some quite novel. For example the UMER beam energy of 10 keV makes the beam very sensitive to the Earth magnetic field, which we can fortunately use to assist in bending the beam. This paper presents a systematic simulation study of the interaction of space charge and energy spread, with and without the earth magnetic field.