Fast pulse shaping for a novel gated electron mirror

We present the design and prototype of a switchable electron mirror, along with a technique for driving it with an arbitrary pulse shape. We employ a general technique for electronic pulse-shaping, where high fidelity of the pulse shape is required, but the characteristics of the system, which are possibly nonlinear, are not known. This driving technique uses an arbitrary waveform generator to pre-compensate the pulse, with a simple iterative algorithm used to generate the input waveform. This is a broadly applicable, general method for arbitrary pulse shaping. Driving our switchable electron mirror with a flat-top pulse, we demonstrate an improvement in rms error of roughly two orders of magnitude compared to an uncompensated waveform. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of high fidelity waveform reproduction in the presence of nonidealities, with immediate applications in the realization of novel electron optical components.