Advanced switching schemes in a Stark decelerator

We revisit the operation of the Stark decelerator and present a new, optimized operation scheme, which substantially improves the efficiency of the decelerator at both low and high final velocities, relevant for trapping experiments and collision experiments, respectively. Both experimental and simulation results show that this new mode of operation outperforms the schemes which have hitherto been in use. This new mode of operation could potentially be extended to other deceleration techniques.