| Summary: | In state of the art photoemission electron sources, the transverse emittance of the electron beam is approaching its intrinsic value from the cathode. To reduce the intrinsic emittance, it is straightforward to tune the photon energy of the drive laser toward the photocathode emission threshold. This paper aims at constructing an improved model which takes into account an intermediate energy level to better explain the near threshold photoemission for semiconductors. A dynamic model is also proposed to evaluate the cathode degradation process due to surface oxidation. The models agree well with published results for different materials under various conditions, including electric field, temperature and vacuum condition. The dynamic model predicts that near threshold emission of an oxidized Cs_{3}Sb cathode outperforms UV photoemission of typical metal cathodes in terms of both quantum efficiency and intrinsic emittance. With the oxidization layer, the robustness of semiconductor cathodes to gun vacuum condition may be comparable to a metal cathode. This, however, needs further testing.
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