Cockcroft–Walton generator

[1] It was named after the British and Irish physicists John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, who in 1932 used this circuit design to power their particle accelerator, performing the first accelerator-induced nuclear disintegration in history.

They also are used in everyday electronic devices that require high voltages, such as X-ray machines and photocopiers.

With each change in the derivative of input voltage (i.e. ⁠dVi/dt⁠), current flows up to the next level in the "stack" of capacitors through the diodes.

(More precisely, we should say their actual voltages will converge sufficiently close to the ideal ones ‒ there will always be some ripple from the AC input).

For these reasons, CW multipliers with large number of stages are used only where relatively low output current is required.

CW multipliers are typically used to develop higher voltages for relatively low-current applications, such as bias voltages ranging from tens or hundreds of volts to millions of volts for high-energy physics experiments or lightning safety testing.

CW multipliers are also found, with a higher number of stages, in laser systems, high-voltage power supplies, X-ray systems, CCFL LCD backlighting, traveling-wave tube amplifiers, ion pumps, electrostatic systems, air ionisers, particle accelerators, copy machines, scientific instrumentation, oscilloscopes, television sets and cathode-ray tubes, electroshock weapons, bug zappers and many other applications that use high-voltage DC.

However instead of being powered at one end as in the Cockcroft-Walton, the capacitive ladder is charged in parallel electrostatically by a high frequency oscillating voltage applied between two long half-cylindrical electrodes on either side of the ladder column, which induce voltage in semicircular corona rings attached to each end of the diode rectifier tubes.