A high-voltage amplifier for traveling-wave Stark deceleration

Controlling high voltage is a critical aspect of Stark deceleration, a technique that uses electric fields to produce slow molecules. Traditionally, Stark deceleration required only commercial high-voltage switches to operate. However, a new continuous version of Stark deceleration, which promises significantly improved performance, requires chirped sinusoidal voltages. The complexity of the electronics needed to run this new decelerator has restricted the implementation for all but a few groups. The challenge is to create high-voltage amplifiers that have a frequency range of tens of kilohertz down to DC and that can source and sink enough current (∼1 A) to drive the capacitive load of the decelerator. We present a new high-voltage linear amplifier for driving in-vacuum electrodes for traveling-wave Stark deceleration. The amplifier has a gain of 12 000, output voltages up to ±10 kV, instantaneous currents up to 1.5 A, and a frequency range from 30 kHz down to DC. This makes the amplifier suitable for traveling-wave Stark deceleration of a supersonic molecular beam down to rest.