Review of Fast Beam Chopping

Several types of fast beam chopping systems in use or under construction are presented. Emphasis is given to their specific technologies and in particular their various fields of application. Important parameters are duty cycle, rise- and fall-time, ringing and overall bandwidth. Certain systems have very specific driver concepts, since the generation of multi-kW peak power with nanosecond transients, high repetition rate and very good pulse shape fidelity is not a trivial issue. The design of driver amplifier and actual chopper structure are not always mutually independent and thus some of the limiting aspects will be discussed.