The energy distribution in an electron; beam from an electron gun provided with a biased Wehnelt cylinder was measured by a retarding potential analyser. All the measurements were carried out with a beam of small angular divergence (<3xl0-4 rad) to eliminate the apparent increase of energy width as pointed out by Ichinokawa.The cross section of the beam from a gun with a tungsten hairpin cathode varies as shown in Fig.1a with the bias voltage Vg. The central part of the beam was analysed. An example of the integral curve as well as the energy spectrum is shown in Fig.2. The integral width of the spectrum ΔEi varies with Vg as shown in Fig.1b The width ΔEi is smaller than the Maxwellian width near the cut-off. As |Vg| is decreased, ΔEi increases beyond the Maxwellian width, reaches a maximum and then decreases. Note that the cross section of the beam enlarges with decreasing |Vg|.
