Solid-state modulated kicker pulser

Abstract

A solid-state high voltage pulse generator for highspeed beam kicker applications has been designed and tested at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This kicker pulser uses multiple stages stacked in an inductive-adder configuration where the energy is switched from each stage of the adder by a parallel array of MOSFETs. Features include pulse width, format and amplitude agility all at a high pulse-repetition rate. The modulator can drive a 50%o load at voltages up to 18 kV with +/-10% amplitude modulation at several MHz burst frequency. Rise and fall times are on the order of 10 ns, and the pulser can easily be configured for either positive or negative polarity. The presentation will include test and operational data collected from both the ETA II accelerator kicker and resistive dummy loads.