Advances in sub-nanosecond shutter tube technology and applications in plasma physics

Over the last few years new technologies for the production of fast, high voltage pulses have emerged. The production of kilovolt amplitude pulses has long been a requirement for many high speed camera systems and the appearance of convenient and fast bench top pulsers has greatly speed up shutter tube development in the last two to three years. Although suitable electrical pulses have been produced for some time by large facilities such as electron LINACs and laser driven photoconductive switches, the ability to tinker on the bench top, away from the constraints of a large system, has allowed several new shuttering schemes to progress very rapidly. The high repetition rate available from the pulsers has allowed sampling scopes to be used for characterization of electrical gating schemes. Cameras providing 100ps gating are now available in the optical and X-ray region and such systems have been taking new data on laser plasma experiments. The pulser schemes which have been most fruitful are: Distributed avalanche transistor designs; Planar triode driven by a distributed avalanche stage; and Avalanche diode speed-up networks. Combinations of the above pulsing techniques have been used in several high speed streak camera and shutter tube designs, with gate times from 50ns to 80ps being provided by various versions of the pulsers